Upgrade - 226: The 2018 Upgradies

Episode Date: December 31, 2018

As the year comes to an end, it's time for the Fifth Annual Upgradies! Myke and Jason discuss their favorites of 2018, take the input of more than a thousand Upgradians, and hand out awards in numerous categories! Only the finest will walk away with the most coveted of titles: Upgradies Winner.

From RelayFM, this is the 5th Annual Upgradees Awards. The Upgradees Awards for 2018 are brought to you by Pingdom, Lunar Display, Kane11, and Eero. And here are your hosts, Jason Snell and Mike Hurley. Thank you, Mike Hurley. And hello, my co-host, Mike Hurley. Hi, Jason Snell. I am so excited. We are here for the fifth annual Upgradees Awards. The Upgradians have been voting en masse. I cannot believe this is our fifth year for the Upgradees.

How incredible is that? When I think back to the 2014 Upgradees, the first annual Upgradees, or as we said at the time, the Upgradees, because there's no such thing as first annual. It's hard to believe how far we've come in that people submit things and we're organized. And five years in, we have a track record now. We have a history of giving out awards. It's quite a thing. It is everything I think you dreamed about five years ago and more. It is now. It is a thing that is looked forward to. It is on the podcast calendar. And I wanted to do something special for the fifth year. So we have something new, and that is Upgradees.com. I have been working with Zach Knox. Zach is responsible for the interactive draft scorecards.

And with Zach's help, we have built a website that hosts every runner-up and winner of all of the Upgradees in history, including the 2018. So I would maybe suggest you can go to the website, but don't look at the 2018s if you don't want to see spoilers. But that's all going to be there there and that is going to live now. And every year we will add more and more to that site. We'll add all of the information and I want to get your feedback and we can try and add some different features, but I'm super excited about this. It has all of the information going back from 2014 to now with every runner-up and every winner in all the categories including the lifetime achievement award winners um zach has been incredible to work with on this and i am so so excited that we now have upgradies.com and that is our way that we will celebrate our fifth

annual upgrade awards yeah you know what we should do is we should make it so the website like plays the upgradies music in the background or something, just to be extra fancy. I don't know. And the lake of this confetti falls from the top of the website. Oh, yeah. I think that's what most people like. Yeah.

Let's run over some of the rules just before we get into our first categories. So we are keeping the same categories as last year. Nothing's changed there. We've not added anything. We've kept the same categories. As also from the 2017 Upgradies, we have brought in the

votes from the listeners, from our Upgradians. So we've had nominations for every single category, and what we'll do is we're going to be stating the three highest percentage Upgradian votes. So the three items or apps or shows or whatever it is for each category that got the highest percentage of votes from the upgradients. We will also be adding in our own nominations and then me and Jason will discuss for each category which one we think will take the win for that category. And also as a note we have lifetime achievement award winners. These are for any app, for any service, for any show, for any story that has won three Upgrades

will become a Lifetime Achievement Award winner, which means that it won't be eligible for any future voting. But we will mention it every single year as a Lifetime Achievement Award winner because I think there are some categories that would just win forever, I think. So we decided that we would add that in. winner because i think there are some categories that would just win forever i think so we we

decided that we would uh that we would add that in all right so jason snell are you ready to get into this i am ready mike let's uh let's make it happen the first category is for the best overall iOS app. I will start with our Upgradian votes. So in third place is Apollo for Reddit, which is a Reddit client, Apollo, with 7% of the vote, followed up by 1Password with 7% of the vote, and with a huge 40% of the Upgradian's votes is Overcast by Marco Arment, the podcast app that I am expecting probably around the same amount of percentage of our listeners are listening to this show in right now.

So that's a pretty huge win from the Upgradians votes there for Overcast. When I was adding all of that up and I was doing, I had this very complicated spreadsheet, Jason, that I built, which does some calculations that I don't remember how I made it. So I made it last year and left it for myself in Google Sheets. And when I opened it this year, I was like, I have no idea how it's doing any of this, but I'm so happy that it's doing it. So that's pretty great, right? Overcast, 40%. That's a big percentage there for Overcast. Well, you know, 100% of Upgrade listeners listen to podcasts. They most certainly do.

And a lot of them listen on Overcast. Yeah, story checks out. So what is yours? I want to know your vote. What is your nomination? Well, I'm going to take you back to the episode we did a couple weeks ago where we talked about how I'm finally using the apple pencil for something and how the apple pencil and the new ipad together have uh kind of i don't want to say rekindled

because i use when i travel especially i do podcast editing on my ipad and have done that for a couple of years now but with upgrades to to the software, there was a new version this year, the Apple Pencil, the new iPad Pro. I am now using Ferrite Recording Studio version 2 to edit. I actually edited the last like six episodes of The Incomparable on it, even though I haven't been traveling. I just edit it out, you know, in bed, in the living room, on the couch, wherever, on my iPad, even though I've got my iMac Pro here at my desk because I like doing it so much. So I think, and believe it or not, although it is a newcomer winner in the past, it has never been nominated for this. So I'm going to say

Fairlight Recording Studio 2 is my favorite overall iOS app app so for me i was i was really putting some thought into this and you know like one password overcast right some of the upgrading votes like totally get it like i use these apps every single day i love them but i was thinking like if i think about an application that over the last year since the previous upgrade is has continued to move forward for me i'm probably i'm going to be putting my vote again with the winner of last year um in this entire category which is carrot weather i love carrot weather and i think for me is a shining example of an application that just continues to be progressed uh i think that it is wonderful the the features just keep getting added

and added and added. I feel like every few weeks, maybe every couple of months, there's new big features being added to the app. It only continues to get better. So for me, it is my nomination for best overall iOS app. But nobody wants to hear you talk about the weather, Mike.

No, wait a second. Here you are advocating the weather, Mike. No, wait a second. Here you are advocating for a weather app. I actually only started using Carrot Weather, I think, last year. It may have even been after you praised it so much. And yeah, it's great. I use it all the time. I use it on my Apple Watch.

There's that angle, which I know you don't use an Apple Watch anymore. It was my favorite Apple Watch app. The customization you can do on complications is remarkable. I like it a lot. It's a weather app. I don't use weather apps on my phone all the time, but when I do... This is the one. It's carrot weather. Yeah, absolutely. When I do, it's Carrot Weather. Yeah, absolutely. So we start with our first category with no consensus.

So really what we have available to us, I guess, is these five apps, right? Carrot Weather, Farite, Apollo, 1Password, and Overcast. And now we need to come to a decision about which one of these we want to make the best iOS app of 2018. Well, what's funny is that the three apps that have been put forward, two of them have won the best iOS app. And one of them has won the best newcomer iOS app. So we know they're quality applications. They're all previous award winners. They are.

They are. I don't know, Mike. This is always difficult because this is the stuff you never get to see in the other awards where it's the back room. Behind the scenes. Right. And yet here we just do it on the podcast. So you can see how arbitrary it can be. So here's the thing for me, right? I love Overcast.

It's easily one of my favorite ios apps and i agree i think the work that marco has done this year on the redesign of the now playing screen is wonderful i absolutely love it it's given the app like a fresh coat of paint for me uh it continues to be as for me as good as it's ever been and i think is only getting better so i would have no problem at all putting my uh vote behind overcast i mean i like overcast too i would i would choose overcast over carrot weather i think and and you're saying you would choose overcast over ferrite here's the thing ferrite is a great app i know it's a great app because you use it i just don't use it yeah yeah and i am i am like i can sit i continue to think of the day that i will but it's still not that time for me you know like i've tinkered around with it but

you know this and this is the same with and i think any pro application on any platform has this problem i open it and i don't know what to do right like i am overwhelmed by it and i've had that recently with like, I downloaded some of those affinity apps, like affinity design and, and you know, like, you know, like on iOS and like,

I just had to close it after 10 minutes. It's like, I cannot fathom what I'm supposed to do here, even though I know people do amazing things with them. Yeah. Well, it requires work to get into a pro app and to figure it out. And if you're using some other tool for that task now, as you are with logic, Yeah, well, it requires work to get into a pro app and to figure it out.

And if you're using some other tool for that task now, as you are with Logic, we were just having a conversation with Stephen Hackett about this very thing. It's not Logic. It's different. And you have to adapt. I got a copy of Logic and it sat in a box. That's how long ago it was. For more than a year before I attempted to edit a podcast in Logic. Because I knew that when I took that, instead of doing an edit in two or three hours, I knew that when I switched to Logic, it was going to take me two, three times as long because I was going to have to figure it out as I went. And not just once, but like two, three times as long for months. And it's, you know, it's a big ask to go and adopt any new piece of especially complex pro software, especially if you're used to thinking of it in a certain way. So it's a real challenge. And I decided to dive in a few years ago, and I have no regrets.

But it is hard, especially if you've got your iMac sitting there with Logic and you know exactly what to do, and you can do it in the most efficient way possible. And I think I struggle to give this award to a professional app, honestly. Especially in such a narrow category, which is podcast production on the iPad. Again, this is nothing against Ferrite. It's just this is like, what is the best overall iOS app? That's where it becomes more complicated for me.

I will say when somebody says what what ios app are you most excited about coming to the mac in 2019 i i answer ferrite me too though because they're being a tool on all platforms which is the same probably uh that i know can produce podcasts because jason does it that that makes ferrite an even more tantalizing prospect to me but it's still not where i'm gonna like start editing right now right like the this episode of upgrade is not going to be edited in ferrite by me i'm going to do it in logic because it's what i know and trust but or is it no it's it's not it's not i think we should give this one to the listeners, Mike. Okay, so we're going to say then that the 2018 winner for the best iOS app is Overcast. And what I think is so wonderful about this is Overcast was the first winner in this category.

And it is now in the fifth. So congratulations to Marco Arment of Overcast for this win. And congratulations to the Upgradians, I guess, because they took it from us. They sure did. Again, I totally get the bias in this, right? You listen to podcasts. You probably like podcast apps.

It makes perfect sense. But that is why these are the awards from a podcast, and I think it fits perfectly in that. I agree. It's also in my dock on my iphone like it is one of the four apps that i use the most on my iphone absolutely so when i we're now going to move into the uh best newcomer ios app when i was looking at the uh the upgradians votes for the best overall ios app and saw that 40% swing for Overcast.

I was like, there's no way anything's going to beat that. Well, I was wrong. So these are the Upgradians votes. Drafts 5 in at 5.1% of the vote. Apollo for Reddit, which technically came out in October of 2017, but it got 6.9% of the vote. So I'm kind of fine with it being in there. But the winner with 46.5% of

the Upgradians votes for the best newcomer iOS app in 2018 is Shortcuts. Shortcuts. This one feels pretty cotton dry to me, Jason. You know, what's funny is that I believe we put

in our entries before the result of the upgradients were known and both of us picked shortcuts too i think that it's we agree with you listeners this is you know what what better ios app has occurred this year i know it comes from apple technically but this this app is you know look workflow won in 2014 as best newcomer ios app again the original winner has sort of come back around again uh to be the winner in the newcomer category which is weird but uh it makes sense won best ios app workflow did in 2016 so it has only you know it has a great lineage in these awards you know like the workflow has it because it is such an incredible application and when it becomes part of

apple when it's part of technically the operating system how could it not win yeah it's it's a huge step that such a great app got uh swallowed whole by Apple and then just emerged as itself. But now it's on the inside and it has all the power and the marketing reach and all of these things. And they didn't mess it up. I mean, that's the bottom line is that not only is it great, but Apple didn't like break it into little pieces and make it kind of a muted version of itself. It is still, you know, all the stuff we loved about workflow and then access to new stuff and with a huge amount of potential on the horizon. So, yeah, it's great. This one's easy.

It's a very easy win. You know, shortcuts. Best newcomer iOS app 2018. It's kind of funny. It's now won three awards but not in the same category it's i never would have imagined an app to win best newcomer twice twice how could that right but i think it's totally legit i feel like the counter starts again with shortcuts you know it's it's it's different now this is a new owner new name uh and and as you said about apollo coming out in 2017 it's like also you know we make the

rules so yeah short cuts is a newcomer we made that's it all right let's take a break before we get into the uh best overall mac app uh the best overall mac app category is brought to you by our friends over at pingdom. Pingdom are amazing because they help keep your sites and the sites that you love online. Pingdom monitor your website so you don't have to and give you real-time feedback so you know exactly what's going on at all times. The internet is amazing, but things break every single day. In fact, Pingdom detect more than 400,000 outages every day. It doesn't matter how big your website is, whether you're a startup or a Fortune 500 company, you need alerts about any critical website issues. Pingdom will let you

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So, the Upgradians voted thusly with 4.7% of the vote goes to OmniFocus. 4.9% of the vote goes to Things. This was super interesting to me. One, that they're so close. And then also that Things won because

OmniFocus seems to really be the flag bearer for this stuff. And then at 5.6% of the vote is 1Password. This category had probably the most singular entries of any category because the upgradings got to just write in what their favorite Mac apps were. And oh boy, was there some stuff I'd never heard of, but it's super close in the vote. One password at 5.6% takes the upgradians votes. Jason, I'm going to be completely honest with you here. I have no real dog in this race.

Like I don't really know where to put my vote. It's just going to go to stuff that I voted for in the past. You know, the tools that I am using, you know, tools like Final Cut or Logic or Audio Hijack, right? Like that's where my vote's going to go. Yeah. And for me, like I don't really know where to put it. So I'm kind of, I want to see what you have to say and then contrast that with the upgradients. Well, here's the truth, Mike.

And this goes back to sort of our conversation about iOS. I think it says a lot about where the Mac is today and where it's going. You know, this is a category, and doing my favorites of the year list for six colors, and quite honestly, even back when I worked at Macworld, the Eddie Awards got harder and harder to come up with Mac Awards in, because the Mac as a platform, there's still some stuff happening, but it is, you know, slow. It has sort of crystallized. That's just the truth of it.

I think that's one of the huge motivators behind Apple trying to make it possible for people who use UIKit to write iOS apps to have those apps run on the Mac is that it's, they've got a huge developer base that knows how to make iOS apps to have those apps run on the Mac is that it's, they've got a huge developer base that knows how to make iOS apps and they can't write Mac apps without learning new stuff. And this is going to be a much easier path for them. And I would make a prediction that next year's Mac apps categories and the upgrades are going to be way more interesting because of it. And, and so, I mean, this is just the truth. I love my Mac, but my Mac, the tools I use on my Mac are largely versions of the tools I used on my Mac a long time ago.

It doesn't really change. In fact, one might say the appeal of the Mac is that it doesn't really change. That it's the tools that you, that's the kind of tool it is now is it's the stuff that you rely on. Like BBEdit, you know, I could give BBEdit an award every time because I've been using it to write on my Mac for 20 years or whatever. And if you look at our winners in these categories, it is often just the tools we use because the most important things we do on our Mac, you and I, are our professional tools.

So in this category, Final Cut, Logic, Audio Hijack, and Fantastical when it came out, which is a great app. But it's a utility. And Fantastical 2 won Best Newcomer. So, I mean, there's not a huge flow of Mac apps where you're like, whoa, this blows me away. The apps that I spend most of my time in, and this has been true for the last few years, there's probably five of them. And they haven't changed. It's what's in my talk right it's like you know safari and twitterific and slack and itunes and fantastical and uh you know maybe

something like sound studio and it's logic and final cut and bb edit and i mean it's just it's that it's the tools so what i'm saying is it's not a very exciting category no um this was the reason we created the upgradians voting last year because the two of us couldn't really come up especially in the newcomer mac app category as well yes we just weren't sure that we had enough to say ourselves so we brought in the upgradians and that has been great because these three applications these three mac apps and again for the newcomer mac app is maybe stuff with stuff i haven't used some of it and and i think that it adds into the conversation overall but um but do you actually

have a a specific application that you wanted to pick rather than just going to the upgradians for this vote i did and i i i did not look at our history when i picked it um uh basically i want to put in and again it's because of what i do but i want to put a word in for rogue amoeba in general because that is a company that makes great mac apps and they make great mac apps that are mostly around sound. They're around audio. And they are building modern, great-looking, functional, clever Mac apps. And quite honestly, this is an area where iOS can't eat the Mac's lunch because iOS can't do audio stuff. iOS apps can't do.

They don't have access. And Rogue Amoeba. So I wrote down Audio Hij hijack which has won before um they've added some stuff uh this year they added so all of the live streams we all do now are out of audio hijack that actually while i was at your bachelor party yeah we were sitting next to each other on the sofa uh paul kafas has pushed out the beta note literally uh 80 of the people on the audio hijack beta for live streaming were in the room yeah because it was you and me and steven and and marco i think i think dan warren was the only

other person on the beta list who wasn't there like it was but like that was huge because they had discontinued their old app nice cast and then they built that app's functionality essentially into just an update to Audio Hijack. And so now I can record, I record my microphone, the Skype connection. I build for the incomparable, I build our bootleg MP3. It just, I don't do anything to it. When I'm done, I stop recording and I upload the resulting bootleg file that has said it's an MP3. It's got the show art. And now I live stream in there too. I, you know, I'm compressing the audio on the fly. So all the volumes are matched in the bootleg.

That happens in audio. It's just, it's amazing. And it's that super simple. Once you, again, it's a pro tool, but like once you get used to it, like the blocks and the flow chart interface, it's like, it's super visual. You can see what is happening.

That's Krista Mergen who designed that. And then so they updated it this year. And then I'll throw in, you know, they have Farago, which is their soundboard utility. And we used soundboard from, oh, what was the name of that company that basically went out of business? Oh, I don't know. Ambrosia. Oh, yes. For years and years, right was but it was an old piece of software well they you know rogamiro wrote farago which is you know if you want to play sounds into audio whether you're being a dj or

you know whatever or a podcaster so they brought that out and then they had a new version of loop back this year uh which is a great tool for creating kind of virtual in and out interfaces. So you can move audio around on your Mac from app to app. These are all great tools. So I wrote down Audio Hijack, but when I think about Mac development, one of the few places where I see really clever original pushing the platform forward for what it's good for, it's the Rog Amoeba stuff. So that's kind of my plug for Audio Hijack, new version in general,

and all of Rogue Amoeba in even more general. I would like to give the award to Audio Hijack purely because of the fact that they added the live streaming functionality into it, which was a real big help for me. Because it made our stream sound better as well as just save us because nice cast was really an application that was kind of just like clinging onto the cliff with the edge of its fingertips um and and there was always complaints that the audio levels were all wrong and i can now

fix all of that and have fixed all of that because audio hijack audio hijack is like shortcuts but for audio you know like in a way that you can visually build it but like i could never fix it in in nice cost because it was just too confusing there was a way to add a plug-in to compress the audio and stuff but that old interface which was the old audio hijack interface was just so cryptic and the new one is so simple um so so that's great i mean we'll give it to audio hijack but i just you know in general i would say it's also kind of an acknowledgement of the other apps that they're building because they have this whole suite of really great audio apps and you might need only

one of them or you might need all of them i need all of them but it's great are a shining example of what people consider mac apps to be, right? They're not just good apps on the Mac. They are good Mac apps, right? Like there are a lot of good apps on the Mac, but they don't feel like Mac apps. Audio Hijack and all of the other Rogamiba apps feel like good Mac apps.

They are definitely like a, they hold that, right? Like that's the thing that they're very good at. So two-time winner's two-time winner two-time winner if it ever wins again lifetime achievement so paul i don't know what you're gonna have to do for us to win again but you never know maybe kill enough one of your apps and add another app add it into audio hijack i don't know that's that's what you're gonna do so we now move into i think an even more complicated category which is the best newcomer Mac app. The Upgradians voted thusly. At 5.8%

of the vote is Agenda, which is that note-taking slash calendar app. OmniFocus 3 brings 7.1% of the vote, and the Drafts 5 beta is at 8.9%. This is unprecedented, I think.

Well, at least from the upgradians. We did give Forecast, which was Marco's app, actually. We put that in this very category in 2016 when it was just a beta. So I correct myself. It is, in fact, a very precedented thing that there would be a Mac beta app in this category. I have absolutely no, even a hint of a nominee for this one. Do you? Yeah, I do. I think it's great that the upgradings helped us out here.

The problem is that I've never used any of these apps. Me either. Absolutely none of them. Doesn't mean we can't give the vote to it, but I have not used any of them. Doesn't mean we can't give the vote to it, but I have not used any of them. Yeah. So I am going to make a nomination that is going to be unpopular.

Oh, dear. It is, in fact, an app that I am, on the record, not liking. This is interesting. We're setting this up interestingly. Okay. Here's the thing.

What happened on the Mac this year that added functionality that made me happy? And the fact is, adding the Home app in Mojave so that I could turn my lights on and off and stuff. And get alerts from my lock, my smart lock when it opens and stuff. That is the thing that I appreciated the most that was new on my Mac this year. So I'm going to nominate the Home app. It's straight out of iOS and it's coming to your Mac. And now, oh, look, there it is. It's the Home app, everybody.

Yay! coming to your mac and now oh look there it is it's got it's the home app everybody i can't i don't know if i can i don't know if i can do this i just for the like the the anger that it will bring about in the upgradians that the best newcomer mac app is a master plan app it's just like a bad mac app and an okay ios app you're worried that they're going to bring their torches and their pitchforks to Castle Upgrade. I'm scared. Throw it out.

Throw the monster out. Well, look, I don't have a dog in this race. I've not used any of the applications that the Upgradians voted. I've not even used the Home app because the only app that I have on Mojave is the Mac Mini. And to be honest, I completely forgot that the Home app even existed. So I'm going to leave this one down to you i am absolving myself of picking the winner in this in this category well um i i don't because i didn't so one thing that i didn't do that i probably should have done um but i don't think i saw the list of upgradian votes was actually try out all of the upgradian nominees since i haven't like agenda looks really good um omnifocus everybody

loves uh one of apple's awards i think it did right like it won the the apple design award i i think or one of the um oh it was the max story select that's what it got uh sure of course i think we need in instead of leaving this category vacant i think we just need to bow to the will of the of the 8.9 of upgradians and give it to the largest voted uh vote block which is the drafts 5 beta people love drafts it's great on ios uh having it be on the Mac is also great. And the Upgradians have spoken. This is a combination host choice and listeners choice award.

And we decide who lives and who dies. But in this case, we say, very well, then, Upgradians. Well done. Drafts 5 beta. Congratulations to Drafts. Agile Tortoise to Greg. I'm looking forward to playing. Oh, in our spreadsheet, you didn't even put Home in as a runner-up.

Boo. No, the runners-up are OmniFocus 3 and Agenda. I appreciate what you're trying to do with that. It's an interesting pick. Oh, you're changing it, huh? Yeah, it's Home as a runner-up. You can't take that away from me. Okay, so Draftraft 5 is the winner,

OmniFocus 3, and Home are the runners-up for the best newcomer Mac app. So we now move into some categories that I know very well. We move into our video categories, and we're going to start off with our game of the year. The Upgradians voted with 6.8% for Pokemon Let's Go, 16.9%

voted for Spider-Man on PS4, and 18.5% voted for Red Dead Redemption 2. I found it very interesting here that God of War, which picked up a lot of the game of the year in many video game outlets, did not make it in to the top three and had less than pokemon 6.8 of the vote so um i'm gonna say i mean i i've i've spoken about this uh on remaster we did our game of the year my game of the year is pokemon let's go because of the nostalgia that i have for the pokemon series and pokemon let's go does an incredible job of making me feel like a 10-year-old again. I've been playing Pokemon games for 20 years, and Pokemon Let's Go is a remake of probably my favorite. It goes back to the original roots, but is the story of Pokemon Yellow.

I love some of the additions that they've made, and having a game like this with this detail on the Nintendo Switch, I'm so excited for the future of the Pokemon series. So Pokemon Let's Go is my nomination for Game of the Year. So I have an Xbox and I have a Switch. Although, again, my son basically is the one who plays them. I don't have a PS4, which is why I haven't played Spider-Man, which is one of those things where, and this has happened to me multiple times in the past, where I think to myself, boy, I kind of just want to buy a console just so I can play one game on

it. And you know what happens after that? I don't play it. That's the truth of it. Because the truth of it is I've learned this about myself, that I'm never going to commit a long amount of time to a console game. I'm never going to commit a long amount of time to a console game i'm never gonna have enough time to sit in front of the tv and and play i will tell you though i know this is kind of pointless to say this but um if you were ever going to do it jason this spider man game is the game because i know story i know you would absolutely adore. The story is so good. The problem is, again, that I just don't see myself putting in that kind of time on any game ever.

Yeah, you're looking at 25, 30 hours to get through the story. It's just, I just don't think I would ever do that. That's just, I'm trying to be realistic about it. There are games that I have put time in. And in fact, my nominee is a game that I put a lot of time in. But it's an iOS game, and I played it on the iPad. And the difference there is that I don't have to turn on a console in my living room when nobody else is around and play the game. I can just play it wherever when I'm on my iPad. And that makes a difference. That is actually a big

difference in having the freedom to do that and move where I want and still play the game, on my couch, in bed, at the table, wherever I can play this game. And I did. I played it all the way through. It's probably the best I've been at a video game in years. i got really good at it and played the whole thing through it was a wonderful adventure and i got to the end and i had that feeling of fulfillment having met all of the obstacles and uh and uh then basically stopped playing it i would actually recommend at this point that you don't say the name of this game and we wait to the next category oh interesting because here's the thing that game is incredible i don't think it's going to win this category but it very well could

win the next one i think you're right so given the uh love the upgradians had or at least seven percent of them for pokemon and that you love it so much i think we should just acclaim pokemon let's go by the way my dog's name is evie so let's go evie uh pokemon let's go is the winner uh this was one you know we both have our pet categories and this was one this is yours this is mine and i kind of went into this strange year if i had a very strong opinion about many video games from which i could choose one as the game of the year that would be a strange year i would that's the year that I had no job. I would say

just to put this in just for the sake of it, I would put Spider-Man in next before Red Dead. I have not played enough of the story of Red Dead yet, but honestly, Red Dead Redemption 2, whilst being an incredible game, did not grab me the way

that Spider-Man did. And I was in for Spider-Man. I was finishing that game, and I played nothing else until I finished the story. With Red Dead, I started it, and I've been letting a lot of other video games in whilst I've been playing this. It's great.

It's maybe just a little bit on the slow side for me, but cannot be happier about the fact that Pokemon Let's Go has picked up the upgrade for this year. I just, I adore, I adore that game. If you want to hear more about why, just go listen to our Game of the Year episode of Remastered. I go into a lot of detail about why i love it which is more than anybody needs right now because we should talk about the best ios games of the year now in at 10.4 percent of the upgradians votes is stardew valley which is an incredible port by the way to to ios that they did such a great job with this port they have added some functions into that game that don't exist on any other platforms that make the gameplay so much better so like they did a great job of that a 17.5 percent is hold down which is a wonderful game and i'll get to that in a minute because it's actually my nomination as

well and 18.3 percent is alto's odyssey so if you'll allow me for a moment jason to talk about hold down okay this was a real surprise for me this is one of those games every now and then i was i follow a lot of like video game journalists and stuff on twitter there will be a day where a game comes out and everyone's talking about it and i download it and i'm hooked and hold down was that um it is like this weird cross between like peggle and down well which is another game that i played that i enjoyed like there is some it's really hard to explain but you have to fire balls into blocks and you have to it's kind of like that um brick you know like where you got the little bar that

moves along the bottom of the screen breakout but upside down you go from top down um it is a really wonderful game that i recommend everybody play on ios just excellent um but jason why don't you now finish your uh nomination for your pick yeah the the game that i invested all the time in and got really good at it and is beautiful and has great music and sound and graphics and everything else is alto's odyssey which the upgradians and i agree on so well jason the reason i didn't pick this is because i figured we should talk about another game alto's odyssey is the best ios game that's come out this year without a shadow of a doubt yeah like i actually kind of want to play hold down there's a game that i used to play that is no longer playable because it's a uh there's there's a game i can't even remember the name now

but it was a game where you shot like a laser and and then it basically it would bounce around and it's a very similar kind of getting the angles right in uh so i'm looking forward to playing hold them yeah it's really good also it's odyssey it just i mean seriously as i said earlier i don't have a lot of time to devote to games and that's the problem about like console games and stuff like that i'll play some mario kart that's a lot of time to devote to games. And that's the problem about like console games and stuff like that. I'll play some Mario Kart. That's a lot of fun, but like to play something that's going to require hours and hours of play. The nice thing about Altos Odyssey is though it requires hours and hours of play to get to the end, it's all in very short bursts where you're doing, you can do some runs and you've got your challenges and you've got to knock off all the challenges to get to the end and uh for whatever reason it captured me and i spent a lot of time playing it and i played the

altos adventure but um it was altos odyssey that that because of the different setting the kind of sand setting and the added complications different stuff you could get different achievements that's the one that really put it over the edge and i remember sitting uh looking at the high scoreboard and i saw serenity caldwell and she had like half a million points and i had like 10 000 points and i thought how you know this this is a common thing for me right is that i look at my game center friends and they're all way ahead of me you have a lot of friends that really like video games and i just don't play them that much right um and like two weeks later i had like 750 000 points and i was at the top of my friends list i was like oh

something is happening here and and it's true like when i finished the game and and achieved the last achievement i did one more run where i was just enjoying myself that was like i mean the last achievement is is uh go through i think two sunsets or two sunrises or something. It's like go for an entire day. So it is an extended thing. But I did one last run where I just kind of did it for fun. And I knew that run was going to be my last run in the game because I was going to say goodbye. Like I did it all.

in the game because i was going to say goodbye like i did it all and that was that was actually an amazing kind of feeling strange feeling of accomplishment and also kind of love and familiarity like ah this is so great we had such a good time together and that's it i haven't played it since uh alto's odyssey is the uh is the follow-up to alto's adventure which won in 2015 for best ios, I was convinced that whilst the game looked amazing, it was going to suffer from the second album problem, which I would never be able to live up to. Adventure, but it

surpassed Alto's Adventure in every way. My favorite thing is the environment changes. I think that they really found a way to make the game more replayable because it's more varied. You don't feel like you're doing the same thing all the time,

and the music in the game is incredible. Alto's Odyssey has joined the very small club of games for me that are infinitely replayable. Like, I play this game all the time, like, on planes while I'm listening to podcasts. It's just like a way to just pass some time and yeah and they have the zen mode right where you can just play and if you fall you just get back up and the points don't matter anymore and you're just having a good time which is

absolutely wonderful game and i'm thrilled that we get to call it our ios game of the year for 2018 they need to do a sequel a third game just so that we can put it in the hall of fame i would be super surprised if they did yeah i know this is oh you think so interesting uh well i mean i guess i reckon they will do another altos game for sure because honestly it was also a success right like yeah that's true so i think that it would be wild to me if they didn't at least give it a go like i think figure you try again for a third time and if that one doesn't work well then you can put it to bed but the second i think was probably even more successful and then the first at least it

seemed that way so yeah so good so we are moving into talking about our favorite movie or tv show of the year but before we do that this category is brought to you by our friends over at Luna Display. Have you ever looked at your iPad and wished you could use it as a second display for your Mac? Well, Luna Display lets you do just that. Your iPad has a beautiful display. And who doesn't want more space when they're working on their Mac? You can put these two devices together and have a perfect crystal clear image quality, reliable performance, and wireless flexibility. You just pop the wonderful little lunar display dongle into your Mac and you're good to go. It will connect over Wi-Fi and that's great,

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love with my Luna display. I have it plugged into my Mac Mini and I can just jump in. Like I had something a couple of days ago. I made a mistake actually in the document for the like totaling up all of our results for the upgradies. And I needed to access the version history of the Google Sheet. Well, you can't do that on iOS. So I opened up my Luna display while I'm sitting on my couch, and I went into my Mac, my Mac Mini. I opened up Chrome, went to Google Sheets, and I was able to fix it because I have that power now that I can use my iOS device to my heart's content.

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Promo code UPGRADE at checkout for 10% off. A thanks to Lunar Display for their support of this show and relay fm so jason you have been doing something in the document and i think we have something a little bit unprecedented about to occur yeah we're going to split a category in two because what was originally the favorite so at the top of the show you said no new categories uh well so what happened what has happened is that the favorite movie category evolved into a favorite movie slash TV category. And we had picks in both, at which point I feel like we have two categories here.

So we are adding a category. Ignore what Mike of the past said. We now have a favorite movie category. So we have two picks here because we originally had the three picks i apologize to everyone this is just what we're doing now uh 5.7 percent of the vote for uh movies went to black panther and 13.1 percent of the vote went to avengers infinity war um i just want to say that i love these two movies i've seen both of these movies i prefer black panther to avengers um i left the cinema on the both times i've seen infinity war

and it wasn't that like i felt sad because of the fact that everybody died right like 50 of the people died half of everybody dies yeah because i figured that you know they'll find a way to work out whatever but i just kind of left that movie with like not an amazing feeling like i did when i saw black panther where i just felt incredible afterwards because it was like this is a super fun movie where like a lot of incredible stuff happens and it's beautiful and it's colorful and it's funny where infinity war is is supposed to be challenging and that gave me a not as good movie experience i think um yeah i i mean i uh as you might expect i in especially in the the incomparable uh people we have these conversations

a lot about these movies and i i like infinity war um for what it is but what it is is essentially the big climax of a shared universe it's it's not really a movie even it's just a it's half of it it's not even the full climax it's a half of the season finale of the tv show that is marvel cinematic universe that's a beautiful way to put it that's just a different kind of thing is it a movie that stands alone i mean you could watch it, but the relationships, the stuff I love about Infinity War is seeing all these characters that we know interacting together and the relationships they've got. That's the stuff that's great.

And that requires many other movies. And that's just, I think if you've seen all the Marvel movies, which I have, there's a huge payoff in Infinity War. But is it like a movie as we think of it? I, I, I think not black Panther is a movie and it's a really great movie. And,

um, I think it should be nominated for Oscars. I think it is a superhero movie that is in some ways a standard superhero movie, and yet has some very interesting things to say about, uh, uh, it's got a point of view, say about society and culture. Um, it's got a point of view say about society and culture

um it's got a point of view um you know it is also showing uh representation that is not as common in in movies in general and superhero movies in particular ryan coogler really great director you know the the cast is great the villain is the best marvel villain um michael b jordan as killmonger just the best um and going into uh the this process i was pretty sure that that was going to be my pick for best movie and then i saw spider-man into the spider-verse which is the best movie i saw all year which shocks me because it is this you know, Sony Pictures animation film where they're trying to take all the Spider-Man intellectual property and turn it into other movies because they get that. They have the license for that from Marvel. action actors and superhero movies when you can create an animated film with this kind of

artfulness that it's fun it's exciting it sounds great it looks amazing and uh i will i'll also say um i feel really bad for pixar because incredibles 2 is a very good movie and in another year you might look at that and say well there's the os Oscar for best animated feature. And Pixar has been such a leader in animation for so long. But this movie outdoes that. This movie is one of those that's going to set the standard for animation and new things that animation can do. It is amazing. So that's my choice, is Spider-Man into the spider-verse i have not seen this movie yet i am going to see this movie in the next couple of days purely because everybody that i know is freaking out about this movie to the point that i have no problem making it the movie of the year just because everybody that i know and trust is going

wild for this movie it actually came out i, I think, during our Upgradian voting category. So that it's not represented in the top of the voting is not necessarily representative of the feelings of Upgradian. So yes, we will declare it. People should go see it while it's in the theater if you can. It is not just a silly cash grab animation spinoff. It's the guys behind the Lego movie who really kind of drove it forward.

The animation style is so interesting and different and it doesn't feel like you're, it's not a generic CGI animation movie, which is not, I don't want to belittle that, but like Pixar kind of set a standard for what, you know, I mean mean they made the first full-on cgi feature film and and you know there are a lot of movies that are in that sort of style and this is trying to take kind of hand-drawn animation looks with you know obviously it's

all done in 3d but like the the way the artfulness of it the way things are rendered the the facts i mean to get down to some details like um because i you know i'm fortunate to know some people who work in in like the vfx industry like the fact that they're animating on um on what they call twos and and ones and mixing them where it's like one frame uh per frame versus sort of doubling frames which is where you get a little more kind of herky jerky style and it changes how you view like blur and stuff and like the choices they've made there are moments where you think you're watching animation overlaid over live action but it's not it's all animated they're just doing things to make your mind be like whoa what am i seeing now it pops out of the frame their uh their rack focus their out of focus uh background stuff is uh color smeared to make it

look like a badly offset printed comic book to kind of give a comic book feel to it it's brilliant it's a brilliant technical piece of work and it's a great story and it's funny and it's got a great hero at the center of it who is miles morales who is the another-man uh for those who don't read the comics who is a great character uh it's it's yeah it's just it's great it's gonna be i think a milestone uh i for animation not just this year but like people are gonna be like um wow animation can do things we didn't even think were possible before blimey all right i can't wait to see this movie i've overhyped it for you now yeah it's a's a good Spider-Man movie. It's fun. Just enjoy it.

So we now move into the TV, the new TV category. There's only one Upgrading Vote left in that, which was The Good Place at 5.2%. Oh, so good. Yeah. I have actually started it. So I watched the first,

I watched like the first half of the first season, thought I'd figured it out and got bored of it, which I know is, I'm not the only person who's been that way which is why you know everybody says like it's it's like with all good tv shows like there's some caveat right like every good tv show has a caveat and the good place is caveat is you've got to stick through the first season right like because then everything starts to it clicks into place and then horrifically out of place the whole delight of it is that you you think you think they've set up like every standard sitcom they've set up the premise and

now they're going to riff on that for the next four years and that is not what happens in that show so uh i'm it has become my like this is what i watch when i'm traveling tv show so because it's all on netflix here and it's all downloadable so it So it's great. So a good place at 5.2%. I'm going to vote for Patriot. That is my favorite TV show that I've seen this year. I think it's wonderful. We were able to watch both seasons back-to-back very recently, and I absolutely love that show.

It's great performances throughout. It's very funny. It's very affecting. I really really really love it i don't want to say too much about it honestly because i think it i went into the show mostly cold basically just knowing that a bunch of friends of mine liked it um and i was not let down by that show in any way so patriot for those who don't know because it's not a very descriptive title and if those haven't heard haven't heard me talk about it on other podcasts on tv talk machine tim goodman and i rave about this show all the time we've given it an alternate

title because amazon named it patriot and it's really boring and it's on amazon so you need to get have prime video to see it that name put me off so i'm like i don't want to rip right rah-rah american tv show so what we uh what we call it tim and i uh we call it sad spies that's perfect yeah it's that's that's what it is that's what, we call it sad spies. That's perfect. Yeah. That's what it is. That's what it is. It's sad spies.

There's a sad man in a suit, and they're very sad. There's a dad spy and a son spy and a brother who's... Yeah, and then there's a politician brother, and there's sad people who work in the plumbing industry. They're all sad. Everybody is very... There's a sad detective in luxembourg but it's also very funny it is incredibly funny it is you know sad and depressing in places but hilarious and uplifting and others like it's really good the people are sad the show is incredibly funny so uh yeah it's a weird show

and it's probably not for everybody, but it is one of my, it might be one of my, you know, actually I would, I would go out on a limb here and say that I think the three shows that we're nominating here are my three favorite TV shows right now. So,

uh, we can pick, but they're all great. So the Patriot, Patriot is great. Sat spies on Amazon. Good place. It's on Netflix.

If you're in certain places, the third season is on NBC in the US. But the first two seasons are on Netflix everywhere. And then My Choice is Counterpart, which is on Starz in the US. It's been slowly rolling out internationally. You can get on itunes the first season um and it's one of these frustrations where it's on this obscure service and therefore hard to find and it frustrates me because it is my favorite tv show of the year um season two is on now season one started late last year this is a show with

jk simmons who is an incredible actor giving an amazing performance when if you think about um everybody was raving about the performance in orphan black by tatiana maslany where she's playing five different you know clones basically so it's five different characters but they're all her um that is an amazing performance jk simmons gives a similar or perhaps even better, but certainly similar performance in its brilliance in Counterpart. It is a spy show as well. This is more of a Cold War spy show with a science fictional twist

that it's very hard not to spoil it because I think all the descriptions talk about it. not to spoil it because I think all the descriptions talk about it. If you are really good and don't get spoiled about it and just watch the show, watch the first episode, you'll discover the twist and it's great. It's great even if you know the twist. But it is a fun twist and it means that it amps up the amount of work that J.K. Simmons has to do

and that there are other great characters in it too. It is, it's set in Berlin. So it definitely has that Cold War spy thriller kind of vibe to it. At the same time though, it is about these characters and it is about the choices we make and don't make in our lives and where they lead us and uh it is so you know so that part of it is the part that really pushes it over the edge for me

and makes it that much better so counterpart if you can find it i highly recommend it so as the guy who's seen all three of these how do you want to stack this i am so happy that you like patriot that we should just pick patriot yay because that that is that is my one b that is that is such a weird great show um if people follow merlin on twitter they've probably seen merlin post nonsensical things that are all from patriot because because it's that kind of show yeah it's a great show but all three of these are great shows people should watch all i found out about it from dubai friday that that's where i kind of found out about because but i've not listened to well i've actually gone back and listened to the episode that i think it went from tv talk machine to merlin to dubai friday to you

to the upgradies so yeah love that chain come all the way around so let's now move into our favorite mike at the movies from upgrade so this is um the idea of this is it is the favorite segment from this i think that a lot of the time this this it's difficult to see especially with the upgradians how they vote for this i tend to believe that people just tend to vote for their favorite movie that we did a much of the movies about we have 21.1% for aliens, 26.5% for Hamilton, which is technically Mike at the matinee, but it will count. And Avengers infinity war 39.7% of the vote, which is a very large percentage for me. It was Hamilton because I loved Hamilton so frigging' much and I was so excited. One of the reasons that I was so excited to see that show

was to get to talk to you about it. And because all I wanted to do was talk about it anyway. But I was really, really excited to get the chance to talk about Hamilton on Upgrade. And I loved talking about it, but I loved seeing it. I've seen it twice now. I still listen to the album all the time.

It's different the second time, right? Oh, it's so different. But oh boy, do I cry in basically all the same places. Yeah, yeah. I love it. Hey, everybody, it's two guys who've seen Hamilton twice. People don't like to hear it, but it is really different the second time. It's coming back to San Francisco.

I'm hoping to go again, but we don't have tickets. So we'll see. My pick was Totoro, only because I love that movie. And it was coming back to San Francisco. I'm hoping to go again, but we don't have tickets. So we'll see. Um, uh, my pick was Totoro only because I love that movie. And it was very amusing to see you. It's like, to me, the prime Mike of the movies experience, which is Mike has no idea what he's getting into here.

Yeah. Um, and in something that is very different. And, uh, so I, I really enjoyed that as, as the other person on that episode,

I really enjoyed you going through that experience of a movie that I know by heart, but that you had no idea what you were getting into. But I'm happy to acclaim Hamilton because that was a great experience. I'm so happy. Hamilton is one of my favorite things that, you know, works of art that has ever been made

in the last few years. So I'm happy that you got to experience it. It ever been made in the last few years so i'm happy to have that that you got to experience it it was also something long and coming right because you bought those you got those tickets like a year in advance yes and then we waited it was one year and one week in advance because when i bought the tickets and told her you know she's like oh we're going next week's like no no we're going next week yeah yeah so i mean if you're in london it's actually not incredibly difficult to get tickets now um so i would really really recommend that you go and see it so we'll move into the favorite book category that i never have any votes for uh no because

i just don't read books but never learned to read the austgradians voting went thusly uh with 3.2 percent of the vote is bad blood by john carrieru carrieru oh that's the one about the the um the theranos uh con job oh i've heard great things about that book yeah well i've actually had the entire book described to me twice uh which sounds great um 8.7 percent is an absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green, which is a book that I actually really want to read. It's kind of, I think at its core, it's about social media's influence in the world, I think is kind of one of the themes.

I actually do want to read that. I have a tab open in Chrome to get that on Audible. And at 13.8% of the vote, it's not surprising to me, is Creative Selection by Ken Kushenda, which is a book about Apple stuff. Yeah, of course. So what happens in this category every year, people who haven't listened to the Upgradies before may not know this, but what happens is then I tell you what my favorite books of the year are and I pick my favorite and that's the winner. Yeah.

That's what happens. So I thank all the Upgradians for sending in these picks. It's great to have your voice heard. Now I'm going to choose the winner. All right, I have three books that were my three favorite books of the year and I'll share them with you now.

One is a book that listeners may love. It is called Type Set in the Future by Dave Addy. It is basically a coffee table book. He's the guy who has been writing these long essays on the web about how type and interface in science fiction movies portrays the future. You've probably read at least one of them. He did one about Alien. He did one about 2001. He did one about Star Trek, the motion picture.

He did one about WALL-E that he just posted. He did one about WALL-E that he just posted. With copious screenshots and details, and he turned it into a coffee table book. It is a beautiful, heavy, high-quality printed, so many images. It is a great use of the paper book format, and I highly recommend people get the beautiful paper book of typeset in the future. If you like user interface design and typefaces and science fiction movies, this is your jam. I like those things. This is my jam. Great book, Dave Addy typeset in the future. And then I have two novels. As I've said on this show before, one of the delights in doing the grind for The Incomparable of reading every nominee for all the major science fiction and fantasy novel awards. And that means here's your assignment for one podcast is read 14 books. It's a lot of investment for a very small amount of time on a podcast ultimately. investment for a very small amount of time on a podcast ultimately. But what I get out of it every year is a book or two when people say, hey, you read a lot of books. What was your favorite book?

What should I read? Do you have a book for me? I get that a lot. Do you have a book for me? And every year by going through that process, I find one or two books. I'm like, oh yeah, I do have a book for you because there are these delightful surprises of books that I might never have read had I not been going through the shortlists. And I discovered them. So I have two this year. One is That Discovery, which is a book by Theodora Goss named The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter. Which is a story set in the 19th century in London. set in the 19th century in London.

It features a bunch of characters from literary history, all kind of put together. Ultimately, it's a story of a group of women who are the monsters in classic literature, and they're the heroes in this book. That's the short version of the premise. So it's the daughters of Mr. Hyde and dr jekyll okay it is uh the bride of frankenstein it is a character from a uh a nathaniel hawthorne short story who is a woman who is poisonous to the

touch um also sherlock holmes and dr watson are in it. Renfield from Dracula is in it. It's just all of these characters together. And it is like a Sherlock Holmes story in that it's kind of this mystery that's being pursued by Miss Jekyll and her ever accumulating group of friends who are, you know, and I really like the way the way it sounds really good.

It's, it's, it's a super fun book. There is a sequel that is also fun. The sequel is very long. It's like two books. I didn't like it as much as the first one. Cause the first one's a little bit snappier,

but it's a lot of fun, great characters. And, and Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are used really well in it too. It's it's just, it's great. So The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter. And then the other book that I want to recommend to people, which

I imagine will be on the short list for the coming year, but I have already read it, is a book called The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal. I mean, technically, it's an alt history because it's set in a slightly different set series of historical events than, than ours. It's already kind of not quite the right history. And then kind of a cataclysmic event happens. But really what it's about is it's an alt history look at an alternative space program in the late fifties and early sixties where they're trying to get people in space. And it's the story, the main character is, you basically already know from the beginning,

she's the lady astronaut. It's actually called the Lady Astronaut Series. And the whole idea here is you're basically watching this character who is ultimately going to be the first woman in space and how she has to struggle with her sort of fame that she has and also the politics and the sexism and the racism of the era to ultimately be one of the astronauts who gets to go to space. And there is a

sequel that was released actually two months later. So it was basically released as a pair. And the sequel is great too. And in the sequel, they go to Mars. So it's awesome. It's a great book. It's the best book I read all year. It's The Calculating Stars. And that would be my choice for the winner in this category. So The Calculating Stars is going to be the winner. What do you want to be the runners up?

The runners up. Let's put Creative Selection and Typeset in the future in there. Wonderful. I think that they're actually probably pretty good picks just in general for listeners of this show for our listeners yeah so if you want a novel read the calculating stars or maybe the strange case of the alchemist daughter but i would say uh for upgradians uh check out uh creative selection if you haven't sure that's a good book i read it i reviewed it and uh and uh typeset in the future so we're gonna move in now to talking about some technology stuff we're gonna talk about some products and some

stories and the favorite apple product of the year this is a big one actually is our next category and that award that category is brought to you by kane 11 the company who make ridiculously comfortable socks in precisely your size here's the deal the socks that you're wearing right now they're going to be like a one size fits a group affair like oh it's either one size fits all or one size fits seven to ten like but the thing is we don't have the same size feet we don't wear shoes that way and this is what kane 11 thought themselves, we should do something about this. So Kane 11's merino wool socks offer a precise fit. They come in 11 sizes from 7 through to 17. That's where the 11 comes from in Kane 11. You will be amazed when you feel the difference

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order. Our thanks to Kane 11 for their support of this show and RelayFM. Okay, Jason, so we're about to kick this thing up a notch. Woo! Let's talk about our favorite Apple product of this year. Now, of every single category from the Upgradians, this one was the one I was most surprised with.

All right? You ready for this? I am. So these were the votes. With 15.9% of the vote for the favorite Apple product this year was the 11-inch iPad Pro.

18.1% was the 12.9-inch iPad Pro. At 21.6% of the vote is the Apple Watch Series 4. Well, you know, the consensus coming out of the September event was that the most interesting product was the Apple Watch Series 4, and it is great. I know that you aren't using an Apple Watch Series 4. Well, you know, the consensus coming out of the September event was that the most interesting product was the Apple Watch Series 4. And it is great.

Like, I know that you aren't using an Apple Watch, but like the added screen... It's the very best Apple Watch by like a mile, right? It's a huge update. I love mine. I'm so happy to have the bigger screen and everything. It's great. You know, the story of a lot of Apple's products right now

is that the hardware is amazing and the software is a little bit of a letdown, which is interesting. And I hope they're trying to address it because they are clearly the best in the world at making hardware and their software is kind of struggling. But the Apple Watch Series 4 is great. And it's funny that coming out of an iPhone event, the thing people were buzzing about the most was the Apple Watch. I mean, I think the iPhones were good, right? But the Apple Watch was a big step forward in a category where Apple already had a lead in terms of the hardware. It was just super surprising to me to see it stacked this way,

that it's both iPads and the Apple Watch. There's no iPhones in there at all, right? The bigger iPad ahead of the smaller iPad too. Like that's... I do think that the size differences this year tipped the 12.9 for a lot of people. Right? They're so

close in size. I think for a lot of people it made the 12.9 an easier purchase. A little more palatable than it was. Here's the thing. If you use a 12.9 inch iPad Pro, this one is so much better than the last one that your love for that device will probably eclipse most other devices you own uh am I maybe showing my hand a little bit for my vote

could be but I I am genuinely I was like I was really surprised to see the Apple Watch uh up there like again I think what it is and the reason I was surprised is because I would probably say that more people own iPads than they do Apple Watches, and more people definitely own iPhones than they do Apple Watches. So I wasn't necessarily thinking there would be enough people to put it there. But what I think it is, is the people that own the Series 4 Apple Watch, they absolutely love it right like so while the maybe the overall numbers aren't there of people that own those products you you know i would say that most people that probably bought a new iphone to go along with their new apple watch or vice versa they probably love their apple watch more than they love the new iphone because the new iphones are great but there kind of really isn't anything amazing to them right like the camera's incredible but like the camera's always incredible you know

like it's an improved 10 the 10 was the big jump and this is i mean the 10r is a different kind of product but still they're all in the 10 family and they're all sort of like taking advantage of the advance that happened the year before where this is the big jump for the apple watch so that's the difference there the apple watch series 4 tops the uh the upgradians vote but uh i've got to give it so here's the thing i've got to give it to the ipad pro but i'm gonna give it to the 12.9 um i absolutely adore it it is so good in every way i love it i love it so much um it's the best ipad apple's ever made obviously uh and and because i think for a while there,

especially in the last revision, I think the 10.5 for me beat out the 12.9 because the design was cooler. But with the 12.9, it is smaller in the ways that it matters. It is lighter. It is a better looking device. The whole package of

the 12.9 unbeatable now like that is an incredible incredible thing would i still recommend the ipad pro 11 inch to most people maybe maybe i would i i think that it is more question now than it was before um but the the 12.9 is easily my favorite i i'm with you there this is going to be an acclamation from you and me that it's the ipad when we agree nothing can stop us yeah um the ipad pro 12.9 yeah i i um i think i talked about this on the show maybe even right after the event but like that um i've been thinking as a 12.9 user. So the one that I bought was the first generation. And so I've been using that a lot. And the second generation 12.9 had some nice updates, but I've been anticipating this one.

But I've been thinking going into it like, you know, my wife uses the smaller iPad. It's nice. It's so much lighter. I really was thinking this new one I'm going to have to see, especially with the bigger screen and all of that on the smaller model, which turns out is the 11. I might go to the smaller iPad. And then I held the shrunken down 12.9, where they did the opposite of what they did the 11, where they expanded the 11 screen. But the 12.9, they kept the screen and just shrunk everything around it. Both the right decisions.

And it makes that 12.9, which is still big and it's still much bigger and heavier than the 11, but they're closer. And, you know, it is, as somebody who's been carrying the original 12.9 for a long time, it is so much nicer that it is thinner and lighter. And the accessories are thinner and lighter because of that too, because so much like that it is thinner and lighter. And the accessories are thinner and lighter

because of that too, because so much like the smart keyboard on the old 12.9, so much of its bulk and just kind of unpleasantness was the fact that it had to cover that whole huge surface area of the whole front glass of the screen. And there's a lot less surface area on this thing. Plus it's thinner. So in the end, I, you i you know i was really open this is one of the things where it's of course the 12.9 guy just got another 12.9 like i really expected to go to the 11 and then i held the new 12.9 i was like oh like i i don't need to compromise in order to get the smaller thing now because this is going to be it's still the huge screen but also that much nicer so yeah it's they're both great,

but the 12.9 is my choice too. This is the first time that an iPad of any type has won an upgrade-y. Well, it was the right time. Let's say in this category. So it won most life-changing hardware in 2015, but it's never won the best Apple product, the favorite Apple product category. Amazing.

Yeah, I agree. This is the right time for it to win that. So we now move into the favorite non-Apple product, the favorite Apple product category. Amazing. Yeah, I agree. This is the right time for it to win that. So we now move into the favorite non-Apple product. There's some surprising ones in here from the Upgradian. So 2.6% of the vote is the Amazon Echo Dot 3rd generation.

3.1% of the vote is the Google Home Hub. I cannot fathom that, to be honest. Because it came out in October. I can't imagine how many people have actually bought it. And I do not like that product. I think it is a cool idea. You know, like in the Echo Show is cool. Like I actually just spent Christmas at my uncle's and he has an Echo Show and we're probably going to get one. It tipped me over the edge. I thought we wanted one, but now I definitely know that we want one. But the Google Home Hub, I actually find the hardware to be not very attractive at all.

It's a white screen, which you can't change. You can change the color of the base, but I think the screen is always white. It has a huge bezel on it, which is super noticeable. I just find it very interesting that it got the... The screen's way too small. It's like a seven-inch screen or something. But yeah, it picks up the second in the Upgradians vote. And at top is the Google Pixel 3 with 7.4% of the vote. That is not surprising to me because I figure if you don't use an iPhone and you listen to this show,

you're probably using the best Android phone or the most stock Android phone. And the Google Pixel 3 is it. And as somebody who owns one, I own the regular size, it's a wonderful device. I think it looks great, even though it isn't edge-to-edge, I think the actual design looks really good.

I think that, of course, you know, for me, that camera, that camera beats the iPhone camera for me like 95% of the time. I think that the Google Pixel 3 camera and especially that Night Sight stuff that they did, it is an amazing device. But for me, I am going to go

with the Bridge keyboard as my favorite non-Apple product. Which echoes my vote in 2016 where I voted for the Logitech Create 9.7 because I loved that keyboard. It was wonderful on my 9.7 inch iPad Pro and the bridge keyboard was just a because it's a real story for me you know like i think in 2017 i really i hated it

because i bought one and i got and i replaced it and it didn't work and right it sucked and i hated it but then i gave it a shot because they updated it, and you said it was working perfectly. So I gave it another go and absolutely fell in love with it. Like, it changed the way that I used my iPad at home. Like, it was perfect because I'd also moved to using stands, right? We spoke about the stands that we used. Ah, yes. And ultimately, because this was a Bluetooth keyboard

and not a smart keyboard, I would just use that keyboard when I put it in my stand rather than needing another keyboard right so because it's just a keyboard when you take the screen off yeah so i love the the bridge keyboard you had a a preview of the next bridge keyboard which we're going to talk about next week because i we need to get into some detail on that. But I am very excited for the next ones. I cannot wait for them. And it was one of my favorite products, bar none this year.

And it made my iPad Pro, which obviously I love so much, the previous one even, I love that. It made that product even better. So I love the Bridge keyboard and I just can't wait for the next one. Yeah, i echo you the uh the new one we'll talk about next week but like the the bottom line is it feels very much

like the old one it's just it fits the new design but we'll get to that next week um my choice i thought about this a lot there's a bunch of uh products i could put in here um another thing that we should probably talk about next week is that i got a roomba uh and so that was a fun tech product this year oh yeah oh boy i got a story there but it's doing great um i listened to your interview members may know that there's a special podcast where your roomba is interviewed yep that's wild that's just the whole thing there's but the thing is that the episode is called something like a dirt event detected, and I laughed because I get that now. Yep. Everybody loves a dirt

event if you're a Roomba owner. So I thought about that and other smart home tech we need to talk. I got a smart lock. We should talk about that sometime, but not on this episode. And that's been an interesting experience. But in the end, the product that not only changed my house the most, that's a tech product, but that I've really enjoyed the most, is this year I bought a new 4K HDR TV. I bought the TCL 65 inch tv tcl is has frequently been the wire cutter pick

for best uh hd tv and it's beautiful like it's beautiful it's big 4k hdr stuff on it looks so great including patriot upgradey winner patriot on amazon that's a 4K HDR show. It is gorgeous on this TV, and it's an enormous TV. My parents, when they moved, went out of their motorhome and into their house in Arizona. My dad wanted the biggest TV possible, essentially, so that he could watch football and other stuff. And they got this plasma TV that it's still on the wall, and it is huge. And I got this thing, and it is, it is huge. And, uh, I got this thing and it,

like, it doesn't seem that huge, but the intervening 10 years or eight years or whatever it's been, um, what's happened is that all the bezels, as with all the other tech, all the bezels have gone away. So my parents bought this plasma TV that I think is 62 inches,

but it's got like five inches of bezel all the way around it. And my TCL TV is larger screen than the enormous biggest possible screen in my family. But it doesn't look it because it has almost no bezel. So that's a funny thing where I realized, oh my God, this TV is larger than the impossibly large TV in terms of screen size and I love it so it's great 4K HDR TV is beautiful

and I did buy an Xbox 1X so that I could play 4K Blu-rays on it too but it's a great TV I love it I don't know how I feel about your TV being the winner because I've not seen or used your you and the winner is jason's tv yeah it is weird isn't it what would you like to go with i mean you're a bridge keyboard fan too yeah i think i think

i'll sign on for the bridge keyboards they're they're great i love them if you've got an ipad uh of basically any size they've got a keyboard for you or a pixel slate or a surface like they have a bunch of different ones that's true they they do in fact i'm hopeful in fact what was really funny we'll talk about this next week again but a bunch of people were like well what if ios 13 enables uh trackpad support on the ipad and it's like you know what if that happens i'll be so happy that i'll that i'll wait for bridge to make a keyboard with a trackpad like they do for the surface and i'll buy that one too uh because they do for the surface and they've got one coming from the pixel book as well um it's you know ideally the vendor would like in an ideal world apple would really commit to the idea that some

people want a convertible laptop and they would build something. They would design the iPad to work with a keyboard shell in a really intuitive way where they could go beyond what a third party can do. But Apple seems at this point to be very committed to the smart keyboard and not a more rigid keyboard with a hinge. And so, you know, Apple could make a better one, I'm sure, but they won't. And with the Bridge keyboard, you can turn your iPad into a laptop when you want it to be a laptop

and then in a second, turn it back into a tablet, which is the appeal of it. So the winner of our favorite non-Apple made product for 2018 is the Bridge keyboard. Congratulations, Bridge. So now we move into the worst gadget

slash most disappointing technology of the year. In at third place from the upgradians of 6.4% is the Facebook Portal. Facebook Portal is the video calling screen thing that you can buy from Facebook, which just seems like a, I don't really know. I mean, my feeling on this is 6.4% of upgradians have not bought and used this product and don't like it.

They just think that it is a mad thing to buy. You know, so Lauren doesn't watch tech closely, but we're sitting watching the World Series or something and that Facebook portal ad comes on. And it gets to the end where the punchline is like, it's a camera that's in your home and it's sending things back to Facebook all the time. And she looks at me and she says, oh, hell no. As a non-tech person, she's like, Facebook in my house, it's not going to happen. She's like, Facebook in my house, it's not going to happen. And yeah, I wish Facebook all the luck in the world.

That could be the best by far product in that category. And it wouldn't matter given Facebook's track record. I mean, it wasn't the marketing team's fault, right? But they chose the exact worst time to make a product like this. True. There is not a worse time for Facebook than right now to try and sell a product like this true there is not a worse time for facebook than right now to try and sell a product like this i can only imagine that thing will sell in the thousands of units at the most no one's buying this right now i just cannot fathom i can't i can't envision it at 6.9 is the home pod i was super surprised to see that here with this amount of representation

i would not have been surprised at all six months ago but i feel like the narrative has turned a little bit on the home pod as it's gotten its software updates and as there have been uh some people have bought stereo pairs or there have been sales which i think show that it's just overpriced and if they bring down the price uh more people being inclined to get it it is so much better with a pair, but you really need to discount it if you're going to buy two of those things. It is not without its faults, right? Like me and you, even as we record this yesterday,

were complaining on Twitter about some faults that we were having with our HomePod, but I would nowhere near put it at this category of like my worst gadget. I love my HomePods, but it just suffers from the same Siri problems that all Apple devices do. Yeah, yeah. I mean my HomePods, but it just suffers from the same Siri problems that all Apple devices do. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm frustrated by, I feel like Apple has some very specific

Siri problems that are exacerbated by the HomePod. And one of them is like, I think personalization and prioritization are something that's broken. We can probably talk about this on another show too. But when you ask for a playlist and it's the exact name of a playlist in that you made and it instead gives you a random playlist that you've never seen that has a similar name but you said the exact name so it's like it got the name and then it didn't pick the playlist that's like and that's like a waiting problem and it just seems like it's not waiting properly it's not you know prioritizing personal stuff over stuff that's out there. I heard from a lot of people who say things like, you know, you name an album in your library and it gets something similar that's from Apple Music. It's like, why would you not weight the stuff in my library dramatically more? It's like, it's just stuff that they have to work on.

But even with all those complaints, like I listen to all my music in the house with the HomePods now. listen to all my music in the house with the HomePods now. I don't use, I almost never turn on the receiver and have it go through the Sonos, even though that's a nice experience and sounds better, but it doesn't sound better enough. And the Amazon Echo that we've got doesn't sound good at all. So even though it has Apple Music now, I don't listen to music on that either. I listen to it on the HomePods. So it's gone from being an iffy product, pricey, and with missing features, to being still pricey, although at least you can get some deals, and good. So I wish it were better, but it's not a flop, which it might have been, but it's not. And then at 8.7 percent is air power now this is interesting right the product doesn't exist but i think it's one of the biggest disappointments in technology

product wise this this year because i mean we should have had it last year probably uh and it didn't come this year and there's nothing on it apple seems to be almost acknowledging and not acknowledging its existence at different rates and speeds and different teams and different products and different manuals and different web pages this is an absolute abject failure like i am yeah i'm flabbergasted at how poorly this thing has failed because it doesn't exist you know um i left this blank because i wasn't sure. Because this is one of those things where you've got to kind of rifle through. Like, there's a lot of bad gadgets and disappointing tech out there.

And I wasn't sure where I was going to go. And because I filled out my nominees a week ago. And like two days ago, I was cooking. And I had this moment where I thought, Oh, it's air power. Like I just had this flash where I started laughing and I was like, well, of course that's the answer. It's air power,

or at least the ghost of where air power might be. Um, because you know, it might exist someday and it might actually be good. I like, I always liked the narrative that Apple was kind of reinventing wireless charging that, you know, but there was, there was that kind of, kind of Apple arrogance behind it, right? Which is like,

this group, this standards body has been working on Qi charging for years. But Apple's going to just walk right in and say, ha ha, we're going to fix it for you suckers, and propose new extensions to the standard and all of that. And then silence. Because what it says is that Apple had great confidence and ability to engineer a product, the likes of which they had never made before. So confident that they announced it and then they couldn't ship it. And leaving this product aside, I hope there's a lesson there

that will be taught at Apple University, which is restraining your enthusiasm about what your engineering capabilities are. Because classic Apple culture does not announce this product until it's working, until they announce it and then when they're able to ship it. And a few times we've seen Apple announce products that were not close to ready, the HomePod being one of them. And it seems a little desperate, like they're running scared in terms of the HomePod because of the competition. AirPower just seems arrogant. That is an own goal. They had no reason other than maybe some pride, like that they were announcing Qi chargers but uh weren't making one themselves but also just the arrogance behind it like they could have made a chi charging puck and sold it for 40 more than all the others and uh made a made a fortune on them but they decided no no no

that's not enough for them they want to do something even more and they failed at it and the arrogance that they announced it before they uh actually it in hand, it's just like, I hope that's a lesson they're learning because this is why Apple doesn't pre-announce stuff way in advance. Wait until it's in the hand and it's working and then announce it. You're Apple. You don't need to do that. So I think by acclimation, AirPower is the most disappointing tech of the year. You know, I've been thinking about this. They are so lucky they adopted an open standard for wireless charging.

Right? Imagine if they had shipped wireless charging on those devices and it only worked or it only worked sort of especially well. We don't know. It's possible that those iPhones have special charging tech in them that was designed to work with air power that never shipped. It's entirely possible um and we wouldn't know an extension to chi that just has never been enabled because they didn't

they didn't do it so it is i mean seriously monetarily imagine if they had done an apple charger they would have sold a bunch of those instead of just working with the partners but they didn't because they had this other thing that never came. What a disaster. So congratulations, Apple. You win the most disappointing technology of the year. So we're going to move into our favorite tech story for 2018. The Upgradians voted at 4.1% of the vote was the Tesla Roadster that was launched into space with SpaceX. Oh, that's a good one. That's a good one.

At 4.5%, i grouped together the various privacy scandals of facebook and i understand when people say this is a favorite story it's not necessarily something they're super happy about but like the facebook's year has been fascinating to watch unfold um so you know like they have had just disaster after disaster for the entire year. But 13.1% is Bloomberg's big hack story, which was their thing in saying that all of the technology companies that you know and love were using chips from a company called Supermicro, which were being hacked and spied on by the Chinese government.

A story that, for all intents and purposes, seems to be completely wrong, but Bloomberg is standing behind. And then I guess all of the resulting drama that came from that story. I think this is a very good pick for one of, if not the most interesting technology story of the year. But of course, we have our own picks. I am going to pick, this is probably as a surprise of nobody, a theme of the continued convergence of technology companies and streaming media. It's one of my very favorite things of the year. It's why we created the upstream segment

because even as somebody that does not consume as much media as you do, I just like watching the business moves of it all. I think that we're going into a new age of media at this point, and it is the technology companies that we were already talking about that are going to own it, except for Disney. And it's obviously going to keep growing, because in the next five years,

a ghost has said that Upstream will be its own podcast. Exactly. Everybody knows that. And I was saying about it, so I picked a theme. You picked a theme last year, and I wanted to mention this. goes to said that upstream will be its own podcast exactly everybody knows that and and i and i'm saying about it so i picked like a theme you picked a theme last year and i wanted to mention this so in 2017 you picked and it was the the winner we gave it the winners the overreaching smartphone and you specifically called out the red hydrogen one which was seemed like vaporware at the time and the essential phone funny thing is that both of those phones came out right they were out now the red hydrogen phone

the red hydrogen one was panned even by people like mkbhd who should have loved it right because he loves red he didn't like the phone and as of like the last couple of days the essential phone is no longer being sold so you were 100 right about those phones overreaching yeah that was a good one it was a good one and it's funny because there have been there have been like other phones like in this kind of ilk this year that have worked but they've been like the gaming smartphones i have no idea if you're even familiar with these but they weren't overreaching but they were different and they were focused so like right um razer and asus both released gaming smartphones and they seem to have been reviewed really highly and people like them but it's

because they're focused you know the red hydrogen one and the essential phone they were overreaching as you rightly put so that's so mine is uh the continued convergence of tech and streaming media well for for a second i thought your your favorite tech story was when i picked overreaching smartphone and that would create a recursive award we're not doing that not here no more none of that here thank you uh my choice and i really struggled with this i i think i've decided uh to go with the fact that apple put all of its marketing images of its iphones on its website publicly available in advance so that guillermo rambo and steve stratton smith could spelunk and find all of the iphone images and spoil all of the iphone stuff a couple of days before the

event this came very close in the upgradians voting it was in number four so it is a story about being completely baffled about apple's inability to stage their content. Because like, why should that content ever be on a publicly available server until the moment the event ends, right? Like, there is something wrong with Apple servers if they have to get everything in place two days in advance. That's really bad. Or it's a huge mistake and somebody released it to production when they shouldn't have. It's also a great story of detective work or reporting work

where there were some file name consistencies across events that allowed them to intuit what the file names would be for these items. And that goes back to Apple. Apple needs to be much more...

This is like a company hardening themselves against hacker attacks, basically. Apple needs to have security in things like their file names and stuff. They need to randomize all that stuff. They need to build... And perhaps in the last few months, they've done that.

Because people are going to do this. People want to know what Apple is doing. This didn't happen for the October event. You double down on secrecy and then you don't bother to change your standard file names for all of your new product photography. It's baffling. So it's a great story in a bunch of different ways. It did completely spoil that event because we knew everything about those devices, about the Apple Watch and about the new iPhones, even their names, which was kind of a bummer because they had done a pretty good job with at least parts of this to be mysterious. And then it was all just kind of blown.

But I'm also fascinated as a tech story by just what a bad job Apple did. I mean, I will say as somebody who needs to come up with topics for shows about these products in the weeks leading up to the events, I was happy that it happened because it gave us something to talk about. I really love this story because again, it's like the enterprising individual, right? Because Yeme, he knew this, right? He knew this before.

He knew to look for it, right? Yeah, he held onto that fact that he had noticed. He noticed the file names were consistent and that if you could guess or notice this particular blob of text you could use that as the key to unlock all of these other file names and then he sat on it and the iphone event he deployed it and he got it all amazing i want to give this as the story okay text already yeah all right it's really i mean the more we talk about the more i i really really like about it like apple spoils the iphone with bad urls it's amazing very very it's a great story it is a great story and we're probably we're going to come back to the bloomberg uh thing

actually right now as we talk about our favorite tech screw up of the yeah so shout out to i guess we should shout out to nine to five mac because that's where that stuff got posted and posted and good job yeah excellent like that was you spoiled you spoiled all of us but good job yeah but this is what we expect from that you know we've always expected from nine to five that it's going to be some kind of spoiling it is one of the interesting changes because they kind of went from what Mark Gurman has, which is the best sources, right, to now they make their own news. And I kind of like that because now they dig through stuff and they find stuff. And that's kind of been because you look at the HomePod leak the year before, which came as a runner up in that category, favorite tech story. That was nine to five as well.

And they published a lot of that sort of stuff. So they're really great with that. So favorite tech screw-up. We have, from the upgradients, at 13.7% Bloomberg's big hack story. AirPower at 16.5%. And at 27.7% of the vote is Facebook and its various privacy scandals um i wanted to

kind of throw in here it's like a because it's like the facebook stuff like i don't even it's so bad and it's so big that i don't even know how to talk about it but i will i will mention kind of i think my pick here would be Bloomberg and the Supermicro stuff, because I don't even understand what led to that. You know, like, they had sources, which they seem to trust, but spoke to the companies and the companies denied it, but they published anyway, and continue to double down on it, even after more and more people are kind of debunking the story in various ways, but they have stuck by it. It is fascinating to me to see Businessweek

destroy its credibility with at least these companies that they report on. And I think the ramifications for this will probably be like the ramifications that Gizmodo had when it published the iPhone story. You know, like like no one from business week is getting invited to the next apple events and i hope for bloomberg's sake that they don't feel a rub from that yeah it's a weird story it is uh i i felt strongly it wasn't my favorite tech story but as a even the story around the story but is it a screw-up that's the one question is it

seems like there's something screws something screwy is going on here right but whose screw-up is it is still a little bit of an open question it feels to me like it probably is a game of telephone as i've detailed before that led to people being confident and stuff that they they said was true and told business week was true that turned out that they didn't actually know the truth. It is because it seems unlikely that all these companies and the U.S. government would say this didn't happen and that they would just be so blatant to completely deny everything. Is it possible that it's all a conspiracy and they're lying about it?

I guess, but that would be like, it would seem that this government that we have right now in the US would be really happy to talk about another way that China is infiltrating our society and how we need to fight against them, if they could, and they didn't. So yeah, it's baffling. My nomination here is Amazon's HQ2 process in which cities all over North America bend over backwards to offer free stuff to Amazon in exchange for them building a second headquarters outside of Seattle in their city. And Amazon for orchestrating the whole thing as a reality show to get everybody to give them free stuff in contrast to like Apple, which just announced that they were building a big facility in Austin, Texas and did not do a reality show to get there. That I already didn't like this story, but the thing that pushes it over into screw up is that in the end, what happened? Amazon picked two cities.

Amazon picked two cities. They were essentially New York and Washington, D.C., so not small cities that could have gotten a boost from a second headquarters at all, but just added people in two large cities. They also threw in a thing in Nashville, I want to say, where they're going to build a hub for logistics and stuff and distribution. And so what we ended up getting was Amazon played a bunch of cities, got a bunch of offers of free stuff from city governments, and then didn't even do what it said it was going to do and didn't really build a second headquarters. And New York really doesn't want it. The residents of New York are very, very unhappy. New York's doesn't want it. The residents of New York are very, very unhappy. New York's not thrilled. This is a place where places that already have hype, that are high cost of living and high paying jobs are there,

are going to get some more of them, which, you know, as opposed to going to a city that could really use Amazon as a hub and would roll out the red carpet and would give them stuff because they want to have that extra shot in the arm. So this thing that was hyped kind of unpleasantly and led to all of these cities having their plans of what they were going to give to Amazon, in the end, Amazon didn't even do it. They chickened out and they ended up just kind of putting some people in New York and D.C.

Like, what a story. What a screw up up on all fronts on the fronts of the governments and on amazon like how stupid was this whole thing what a waste of everybody's time this should be the favorite our favorite tech screw up of the year but it's got to be facebook right like who's had a worst year on facebook i i think uh yeah i mean really, the Bloomberg thing is pretty good, but yeah, I think it's got to be Facebook. I think having done with Steven, done both subnet and download this year, where we're looking at all the headlines, like the key here is that there is not one Facebook issue. The key is that there are endless facebook issues and some of them are more

serious than others and we've reached the point now where small things that facebook does are blown up because everybody is ready for the next thing that facebook does i mean but also like huge stuff is not really getting covered because it's like you know like at least widely like the cambridge analytica thing was huge but then there's been massive breaches after that but they're just not getting the attention anymore because it's like well we've already been through this like yeah the um and and the um response that facebook has is amazing they always have a you know facts about this blog post that they do where they try to spin it their way um mark zuckerberg basically um has you know he can't be removed because he made the company

and he set it up in a certain way. The people who are in positions of authority over this are incredibly arrogant. You know, they just aren't not convinced that they're wrong. They're ignoring requests from governments.

Like their business model is built on this and that's just how it is. And they built this whole company based on these core ideas, but their lack of good security and practices and their ability to shade the truth when they can, bend the truth to mislead people. We also know that they hired all sorts of opposition research groups. So Facebook is a garbage fire. It is. It's impossible to keep up with. And yes, they are the biggest screw-up in technology this year, without a shadow of a doubt.

Let's talk about something a bit happier. Our most life-changing hardware of the year. The Upgradians voted with the 2018 iPad Pro at 8.8%. This is both models. The 10.7% goes to the AirPods. People still love those AirPods. And it's back again, 20% Apple Watch. Wow.

There's a lot of lives being changed out there, Mike. And most definitely, especially by Apple Watches. People apple watches people love their apple watches yeah about that now i want you to tell me yours because i am astounded by it i'll just go back again to a couple of weeks ago where i talked about it i feel like the apple pencil 2 is the most life-changing hardware for me because it has changed how i edit podcasts i can't believe this i using, because I'm using Ferrite and the Apple Pencil and editing my podcast in the warmth of my house instead of the cooler climate of my garage, which means that I'm around like my pets and my family

and I'm more visible and I'm not behind a closed door on Saturday mornings editing me incomparable. And that's a life change that is enabled by that. Now, yeah, could i use a laptop out there well i could but i i didn't like if i was going to use logic on my macbook air i just would use logic on my i mac pro but um i don't do that now so i'm going to throw that out there i think the apple pencil good product good update and uh i have started to use it and it's changed

my workflows so that's why I mentioned it. I wanted to pick something completely different. We got an espresso machine this year that I love. It is hardware. It's kind of technological in some ways, I guess. It is the Barista Express, which is made by Breville, but in the UK is branded as Sage.

They did like a deal with a big chef here. Anyway, but it's branded as Sage. They did like a deal with a big chef here. Anyway, but it's branded as Sage here. And I really like this product. It's changed my life because I use it multiple times a day and it makes the best coffee that I've ever had at home. I absolutely love it. So I'm going to go with the Sage Barista Express. But obviously, the Apple Pencil 2 is going to win this category because I love the Apple Pencil.

Or is the Apple Watch going to win? No, I don't want to vote the Apple Watch because I would prefer to vote the Apple Pencil 2 and have the Apple Watch as a runner-up because for me personally, this was the year I stopped wearing it. So I'm super excited

to see how happy you have been about the Apple Pencil this year. The Pencil you like so much. Yeah, well, it's a much better product and I've adopted it, so. All right, Jason. So should we move into our final set of categories, the podcast awards section?

Well, it's all that's left. I don't know what else we would do. So sure. Our favorite technology podcast awards section well it's all that's left i don't know what else we would do so sure our favorite technology podcast is uh brought to you by our friends over at ero with ero you can build a wi-fi system that is perfectly tailored to your home considering the high bandwidth world that we live in today you need a distributed system in your home to make sure that you can get the best speeds available no matter where you are in your house.

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so we're rounding out the 2018 Upgradies by talking about some of the best podcasts in our industry and the industry at large. And we start with our favorite tech podcast, which includes the Lifetime Achievement Award winner of the Accidental Tech Podcast. ATP

won three years in a row for the first three years, so we decided to create the lifetime achievement award yes just to get them out of the category get out get out atp is my favorite technology podcast it's the one that i always listen to every week i love it and so i would just keep voting it for it forever even to the point that i actually don't have a nomination in this category because atp is the one that i would always want to vote for. So I haven't voted. Mike, I feel that the Upgradians have done it again with their selections.

So in at kind of third place is Cortex with 7.9%. Thank you very much, Upgradians. The talk show is at 13.7%. Now, here's the thing. Upgrade got 14.5%. But I have a thing about this. I think most people know that we're never going to award Upgrade as the show, which is why

obviously every Upgradian doesn't vote for Upgrade. But thank you to the 14.5% of you that voted for Upgrade anyway. I am genuinely flattered that 21.4% of the Upgradians voted for Connected as their favorite tech podcast. Thank you, Upgradians voted for Connected as their favorite tech podcast.

Thank you, Upgradians, for doing that. Yeah. I love how Upgrade never wins the poll for a favorite podcast. They know we're never going to give it to ourselves, right? There's a reason, but I really like that we come in second. That makes me laugh every time. It's like, so close. We just didn't make it.

Always a bridesmaid, never a bride. I'm with the Upgradians really love connected you know i listened to the prompt back in the day am i about to win my first upgradey yeah yeah i think you are because i i think connected i'm gonna highlight so connected the thing about it is it's the relationship between you three guys but also as the show artwork shows right it's also your different perspectives you get steven in tennessee you're in london federico's in rome and so you have very different perspectives um that come out in hilarious ways i mean we you and i got a flavor of that in the christmas special where we explained the premise of the christmas carol and federico was like i don't know what that is yeah like what yeah like federico being young and italian uh

those two traits i think more than anything else he has just these voids where we assume there's like this historical knowledge that's just he doesn't have that instead he's got this whole other catalog of things that he knows that are, are surprising to us. And it's delightful. Plus he is, you know, yeah, he's a,

he's a quirky, funny guy. And that comes through. And then you guys all have your, like it's a, it's a good relationship. The highlight of this year, by the way,

was the weird fish episode where Federico had to name a bunch of new emoji and try to guess what they were. That was our best episode. That was a pretty incredible episode. So, and also I will say this is the year that Connected's show art got shown on stage at an Apple keynote. So for these reasons, I bestow upon you, Mike Hurley and Stephen Hackett and Federico Vittici, the favorite tech podcast.

It's not from you to yourself. It's from us, the Up upgradians and me to you guys congratulations i genuinely am honored like this is a great honor to me i've always wanted to win an award for one of my shows and now i've done it and i consider obviously the upgrade is to be the most prestigious of all podcasting awards yes absolutely i am absolutely honest it's a little like wearing a t-shirt that says my mom says i'm awesome you can now put on your uh on your site that you you your own podcast gave you an award i'm genuinely like thank you i genuinely think that means so much to me that that you would nominate the show and i didn't know what the

listener results were going to be i just i thought about it. I can't pick ATP, right? It's barred. And I thought, you know, I've really enjoyed listening to Connected this year. My heart was warmed when I got to the voting and saw that. That just felt really, really good. And I know that Federico and Stephen are going to be

really excited to find this out. So thank you so much for that. That means an awful lot. But Apple, next year, upgrade. Yeah, come on. Show art. Let's put upgrade up there next time. Use it.

You can help us out. We'll let you use it. Don't worry. You can take this as our acceptance for you to do it. So we now move into our favorite non-tech podcast of our second Lifetime Achievement Award winner, which is the Flophouse, which also won the first three years in this category.

It's still my favorite. So cannot be voted for anymore. Now, I would like to go straight to the Upgradians votes. 3.2% is last year's winner, The Adventure Zone. 9.2% is frequent runner-up, Hello Internet. And 23.2% of the vote goes to dubai friday which was 2016 uh winner of the newcomer yeah and so dubai friday is the that's a good good range at 23.2 from the upgradians i absolutely love dubai friday like dubai friday gets a big thumbs up for me uh but i wanted to

talk about a show that I absolutely love which I would have wanted to put in it was a newcomer to me this year but it started in kind of I think it was October or November 2017 it's called Wonderful uh Wonderful is hosted by uh Griffin and uh Rachel McElroy um their husband and wife and they used to do a show about The Bachelor and then they ended up hating The Bachelor so they turned their show Rose Buddies into a show called Wonderful and the premise is very simple they both bring to the show

two things that they think are wonderful I love I am very much into shows now that bring joy to me that is a thing that like in 2018 I find just to be a nice thing to have things that bring joy to me that is a thing that like in 2018 i find just to be a nice thing to have things that bring joy to me and wonderful is just pure joy um and i absolutely love this show it is you know

for the reasons that i also love top four um it is really nice to to hear a couple who clearly enjoy each other very much and hear their chemistry wrapped around something that's also super fun and wonderful is that like it is just bliss i love that show so much couples podcasting is a thing for sure um my choice is a uh podcast about one of our nominees for the tv award which is is The Good Place. The Good Place, the podcast is hosted by Mark Evan Jackson, who plays Sean on the show, a recurring character. He does a great job hosting it. He gets access to, you know, actors, but also crew and, you know, writers, producers, directors, casting people. There's so many different things. Art direction. And so as a person who makes independent media themed podcasts, one of the things I like about what we do is we are not in the PR business for them. them like we you know the after the walking dead show is going to say wasn't that a great episode

every time the after the star trek all those after shows are official and they're going to be like wasn't it great let's talk to the cast whereas on an independent podcast you can be like yeah this didn't work it was bad um and you just that's not allowed that i don't like this performance i didn't think this was well-written. You can't. You can't say it. So I like those kinds of podcasts, and I don't really like the official podcasts, except for the access that they grant. The great thing about The Good Place, the podcast, is, yes, they're not going to slag off the show, but it's not really what the show's about. First off, I love the show, so they don't need to slag it off.

It's great. What I love about the podcast, though, is that they let you go in detail about how they make the show. And that Mark Evan Jackson is actually very interested in how they make the show. Where did this story idea come from? What was the plan to take the story in this direction? What was the direction for the actor? Where did they shoot this? How did they make this work with the special effects?

How did these props get created? It really does kind of pick apart episode by episode with different guests, how they make the show. And that's what makes it a great podcast is it's a good host. It's got access, but it's much more interested in how a TV show is made than it is being interested in just kind of like fluffy interviews with actors, which I think is a snooze. So it's a great show. That sounds very interesting. You should listen after you've seen... Yeah, of course.

I imagine it's rife with spoilers. The first two seasons are covered as a rewatch, basically. So you have to have seen the first two seasons. Season three, they're doing episode by episode without spoilers for the future because they're releasing them on the episode. But this came out this year and they went through the first two seasons. Season three, they're doing episode by episode without spoilers for the future because they're releasing them on the episode. But this came out this year and they went through the first, you know, whatever, 25 episodes or something.

In the mind, too, you have seen the first two seasons. And so when you get there, I recommend trying this podcast out because it's really good. Is this going to be a tricky one? What are we going to go with here? You know, people don't you you had do by friday with a slash with wonderful yeah and i i feel like the upgradians also spoke pretty clearly here we know the people who do by

friday but that is a and we've been on it you and i yep and federico and steven um it's a really wacky podcast, but it is good people using this medium to do some very... Yeah, they're exploiting the medium of podcasting in lots of interesting ways. And since you had it as your kind of runner-up, and it

was the clear choice of the Upgradians, and it's a previous winner for Newcomer, I say Dubai Friday. Congratulations, Dubai Friday. Well-deserved. Love that show. Again, it's like a show I will never miss every week. I really, really do love it.

It's fantastic. So very happy for it to be our favorite non-tech podcast for 2018. So moving to our final award of the evening, favorite podcast newcomer. So the Upgradians voted with 6.6% newcomer to RelayFM, Automators, a show all about automating your devices, your computing devices. And it's hosted by Rosemary Orchard and David Sparks.

At 7.8% is Supercomputer, hosted by Upgradia award winning host of Dubai Friday Alex Cox and Matt Cassinelli he used to work at Workflow and Shortcuts team I think in the Shortcuts team at Apple and they talk about basically

all the stuff you would assume again stuff about automation but just about using technology devices to do the things that you want them to do the things that you want them to do and tied at 7.8 which was baffling to me they got the exact same amount of votes uh is the show that i do called playing for fun relay fm which i again um apps i was really surprised to see playing for fun here and um i thank everybody for that. Talking about the joy, that I love Wonderful because it just brings me joy.

That is what me and Tiff tried to do with Playing for Fun. We just talk about good stuff. Our streams are fun. We do Twitch streaming. We just want to put nice stuff into the world. And so I genuinely really appreciate the vote for Playing for fun there from the Upgradian. So thank you for that. Jason, what is your newcomer show?

I'm just going to say See Above, The Good Place, the podcast was new this year. I loved it. It was my number one new podcast this year. There are some other ones out there that are good, but this is the one that was the best for me. podcast this year. There are some other ones out there that are good, but this is the one that was the best for me. My vote is for a show that my co-host Tiff on Playing for Fun does on The

Incomparable with Clockwise host Micah Sargent, which is Somehow I Manage, which is a rewatch show of The Office. I love The Office. This show has got me to rewatch The Office again, and I really like hearing two absolute Office nerds

like they are super fans talk about this show again it is a show that brings me joy because it is talking about the fun stuff in one of my favorite TV shows of all time and I think that they've done some really fun things like they have super hilarious intros a lot of the time where they like recreate something from the show which with their amazing

acting which i really enjoy um and i love that they give dundee awards out at the end of every episode and something that i value greatly in this in this podcast is that they they do not spoil anything in for the future like i can tell that i mean they spoke about this but i can tell the great the great lengths that they go to so if you are watching the office for the first time they don't spoil stuff that happens in later seasons which i think is super valuable for a show like this. So my vote for my favorite podcast newcomer is Somehow I Manage. Well, that's very nice as somebody who does the incomparable network.

That's good. So if my daughter were voting, she would vote for Somehow I Manage because Jamie doesn't, The Office is her favorite TV show. She really wants to be on Somehow I Manage. I think she's angling for a guest slot at some point. And that's amazing because she does not want to be on podcasts.

We have to drag her on. And she listens to Somehow I Manage. She listens to it regularly and loves it because they love that show as much as she does, which is pretty cool. By the way, Jamie this year for Christmas, one of the things i got her was a dundee award oh very good actual dundee award statue for fine fine work she loved it so where are we going to put our vote for this one um i i look i listened to it twice i want the good place the podcast to to win. Hmm. I mean, you gave me an award, so yeah, sure. Alright, that's how it works. I feel bad for Tiff, though.

She's got two nominations in the same category. Right on the doorstep, but not quite there yet. So that's it. That is our Upgradeys. So don't forget, you can go to Upgradees.com where you will find all of these all of the lists of all

of the winners and the runners up for this year and all previous years from 2014 through to 2018 this was the 5th annual Upgradee Awards you can find more you can find links to every

nomination, so not just the runners-up. If you want to find out more, maybe about the books that Jason listed or some of the video games, all of the nominations will be in our show notes, which you can find in your podcast app of choice, or at relay.fm slash upgrade slash 226. You can go there, or if you

use a great podcast app, you will see the artwork for the Upgradies, for our 5th annual Upgradies which was created by the wonderful Simon Buckmaster who does incredible work for all of our staff here at RelayFM and really knocked it out of the park with this one as we

very cleverly used the Roman numerals for the 5th one so that looks amazing so you can see that on the page or in the upper choice that you use. Thanks to Pingdom, Luna Display, Kane11 and Eero for their support of this show. A huge thank you to the over a thousand of you that voted.

So thank you so much to the Upgradians for their votes. I will not even be upset about how long it took me jason it was two hours it took me to put the uh nominations together sure it was a big job i'm surprised but i loved it only two hours um i loved it this was it would have taken me way longer if i hadn't come up with the very complicated spreadsheet system that uh that i created last year so thank you to past mike for creating that sheet to make this work easier.

Oh, and thank you to Chris Breen for this week and last coming up with special alternative versions of the Upgrade theme song that he created originally. And this was our classy award version. Yep, so thank you so much for another couple of wonderful Breen themes. I enjoy them greatly.

We have really put Chris Breen to work this year. I think this is the third version of the song that we've commissioned this year. Four. Four? Upgradees, Christmas, Draft, and Summer of Fun. Summer of Fun, too. That was one I was forgetting.

Yes, so that's four. And so you can expect to hear those songs played for the many, many more years. We'll be back next year for the sixth annual Upgradeys, but we'll be back next week for the first Upgradeys of 2019. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, Jason Snell. Thank you.