Upgrade - 544: The 2024 Upgradies

Episode Date: December 30, 2024

From Relay, welcome to the 11th Annual Upgradees Awards. This evening's proceedings are brought to you by our broadcast partners, Shareshot, Fitbod, and Data Citizens Dialogues. Simulcast from London, England, and Mill Valley, California, I am one of your hosts, Mike Hurley, and joining me is my illustrious co-host, Mr. Jason Snell. Hi, Jason. Hello, Mike Hurley. How are you? Oh, I'm so excited.

It's the Upgradees. It's the 11th annual Upgradees, which also means it's the 10th anniversary of the Upgradees. It is. 10th anniversary of the Upgradees. That is, 10th anniversary of the Upgradees. That first Upgradees, I know I mentioned this last year, 10 years ago, I was in my in-laws' upper, like one of their guest bedrooms at a really uncomfortable desk

in a really uncomfortable chair, but I remember it so well because it was like, yeah, I've got this podcast now, I got my new job where I'm doing all this podcast and we're doing these things and I gotta go up there and everybody, my whole family and Lauren's whole family are all downstairs and I'm I'm up uh up in a stuffy room doing uh doing what turned out to be the uh very important milestone of the first Upgradees which at the time I thought well remember at the time I thought this is a little

bit silly because I had been coming out of like the Eddie Awards and all of that. And this was, it was like, this is just you and me. And you were like, no, no, man, this is going to be amazing. And that's why I called it the first annual, even though you hate that. I did hate that because nothing is the first annual. Anyway, I guess what I'm saying is thank you for your vision.

Anytime. Anytime. What's happening? That's the magic. It's what makes upgrade everybody's second favorite podcast. So congratulations to us. Well, we'll find that out later on in the show when we get to the podcast category. I would like to mention for the spoiler adverse out there, something we're going to do this

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

you want to see the winners later on. But all of the nominees will be that we mentioned today will be in the show notes for today's episode. Yeah. Now I would like to as all good awards do as awards grow Jason, there has to be like a a pre-show or something like that, you know, to try and get all the other awards in. We have a red carpet? Yeah. Are we on the red carpet? Oh, I see.

This is like the technical award Academy award banquet where they send the nerds to get their awards. So we're going to be doing our technical awards because as we say, you know, around this time of year, it's nice to look back and think about and appreciate the people who help make Upgrade possible because as time has gone on over these 10 years, it has become quite a large team effort to put this show together every single week. So I would like to thank for Web Design of Upgraders.com and also all of our scorecards. The wonderful Zach Knox for the artwork and art direction

is JD Davis and JD did an incredible job with the Upgrade his artwork this year in the obvious only way that it could have gone to, which is all the way to 11. All the way to 11. All the way to 11 for our music, for our special theme and for all of our themes, the wonderful Chris Breen. Jim Mansendorf for achievements in audio editing, of which they are needed sometimes of us. Similarly for achievements in video editing, we'd like to thank the wonderful Chip Studdarth for Chip's work and putting the video clips

and video version of the show together every week. And then for making us cool with the kids, thank you to Jamie Snell for social media assistance. Yep, that's right. We're doing the memes over on TikTok. She was posting things on social media from my couch last week. That's gotta be fun to see, like to see that in action, you know? It's just like things

that happen. Mm hmm. Should we get on to the first award category? I guess so, we're just going right in. Let's see. I mean, is there anything more? This is like when they do best supporting actress before the first commercial break to keep everybody tied in. It's like, I'm sure I've said that before.

Anyway, let's do it. Sure. Let's do it. So let's start off with the best overall iOS app for 2024. I'll mention that our lifetime achievement award winner in this category is Overcast. In case you are new to the Upgradees, if something wins three times in the same category, we kind of raise it up into the rafters

and it will always be mentioned in every Upgradees because this is it, they deserve that, right? But it's to stop we have to stop things Giving them more every year because there are some podcasts and or apps that we may have awarded at 10 out of 11 times We don't talk about that one year If we hadn't otherwise, you know, they know what they did Now we also put out a nomination form to the upgrade Ian's to you our listeners and we got Hundreds and hundreds. I think it was over a thousand submissions that came in.

Love it. I would like to give an additional technical award at this point to Jason for writing a script to help me get through those really quickly. It used to take- You're welcome. This year, I think I put together the Upgradians picks. It took me the same amount of time to do one category in the way I used to do it, as it took me to do the entire thing this time. It used to take me so much work, and so I'm very happy that I don't have to do that anymore.

So we're going to go in from bottom to top. I don't know if you'd say ascending order, right? from bottom to top. I don't know if you'd say, that's ascending order, right? Okay. So with 6% of the upgradians votes is ivory. Actually for this category, it doesn't matter. Because for 6%- Yeah, I was gonna say, ascending from six to six to six, yes.

Six to six to six. Ooh, it's the mark of the beast. All of the other ones, it goes from lowest to highest, but there were so many, so many apps that individual apps nominated here that no one really got a large share of the vote. 6% is Flighty and 6% is Carrot Weather. So that's where the upgradians are.

Ivory, Flighty and Carrot Weather. Jason, what are you thinking? Um, well, I want to do a shout out to the new version of Overcast because it can't win in this category, but after some initial pain, I want to do a shout out to the new version of Overcast because it can't win in this category, but, um, after some, some initial pain, I think in general, I am very happy with where it has gone. And I like that they, that Marco has made some, uh, changes to it that I like, um, and added the, the, you know, what you've listened to over the year where I've gotten to see how everybody listens to Upgrade, the second or third most of all their podcasts,

very exciting. And so I'll shout out Overcast, even though it is not eligible and cannot win. And, you know, I just, in a span of 10 days, I took five flights. And so Flighty's been on my mind, because there were a bunch of big additions to flighty. Plus I find it so useful in general, but they added a bunch of stuff where they're looking

at delays at the incoming airport and the outgoing airport and giving you more detail of why your plane might be delayed. And it's just really good. And at this point, I don't think I would fly without it. I can track my kids' flights as well. So I know when, like, are their flights going to be delayed? And I knew when Jamie landed back home last night. Like, it's...

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

years, but over time, it just got consistently and consistently better. I mean, last year, they added the Apple watch app, which I was very pleased about. But then this year it's overall polish has continued. But then the connection assistant and the delay predictions thing, that is just, those are features that to me, especially the delay predictions is like a dream feature that I just didn't ever really think that they'd be able to add. Because the amount of data that you would need to do that. But I guess at this point, they have gotten to the point where they have enough people using the app that they're able to use the information that

they get along with the information that they get historically from the data providers to build this system to stay like, hey, your plane hasn't left yet. That means you're probably going to be delayed. Like it's a thing where I can look at it and maybe I can think that's the case, but plane hasn't left yet. That means you're probably gonna be delayed. Like it's a thing where I can look at it and maybe I can think that's the case, but I don't know, you know, like how long does it take these things to turn around over? But yeah, Flighty is just an excellent application. And I do actually really want it

to become a lifetime achievement award winner because I think the app is that good. Like it's something I want it to be there. I agree. And I've heard, and one of the things I wanna mention because I know it comes up when we talk about Flighty is that it's a fairly expensive subscription. I agree.

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

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

for the Lifetime Achievement or whatever it is. Let's just put it in there. Well, that's the Hall of Fame because the Lifetime Achievement Award was the thing we did, I guess we do every 10 Upgradees because we did that last there. Well, that's the Hall of Fame because the Lifetime Achievement Award was the thing we did, I guess we do every 10 Upgradeys because we did that last year. I thought that was the other way around though.

Isn't that the Hall of Fame we did last year? Yeah, the Hall of Fame. See, even I get confused. This is the Lifetime Achievement Award. They just got a Lifetime Achievement Award. Hall of Fame's a different thing. It is- Flighty, you're banned.

You're too good. You're banned from the category now. Indeed. Well, this may actually now open up for either Carrot Weather or Ivory. Hilariously, it's the exact same winners and runner-up last year. Yeah, I know. And so, you know, but look, no, but this is like Carrot Weather, for example, has won a bunch of times. And I expect, yeah, I could imagine Carrot Weather

winning next year and also becoming a lifetime winner. And to me, these are apps that have been around for long enough and are good enough that they deserve that. Right. And so it makes sense to me that Flyteam would keep winning because it is also probably the best designed iOS app that I use. And that makes a big difference. I agree. Even down to the way they do their year in review thing, their passport thing, which is actually a really fun feature, the fact that it looks like a passport page.

You don't need to do that, but they do. All these little touches make it overall just really a very strong example of what it takes to have a good iOS app. Like that's that's why it's there. Yeah, agreed. I agree. But it's not about just apps that have existed for a long time. There are also new apps. So we're going to now move into the best newcomer iOS app category of which this year lots of really good options. So the upgradeeans voted thusly with 6% of the vote for croissant, 7% of the vote for Bellatro.

I think that might give a hint for later on that it made it into the app category. It broke out of games and 10% goes to Delta, which is the emulator app, which every time I read this, I cannot fathom that that was this year that Delta came out. And yeah, it's, it's, it's, I believe Delta has been available by other means, but this year it was available in the App Store in Europe. Or everywhere. No, everywhere, right? Cause they, Apple relented and was like, fine. but this year it was available in the App Store in Europe. Or everywhere. No, everywhere, right?

Because Apple relented and was like, fine, have your emulator everywhere, whatever. Right? And so it made it in. It's true. Right? Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Where are you sitting? I struggle with this category. Delta isn't really new, but I like the kind of political statement about it. Bellatro is a game, but I have played it a lot on iPad, especially. Croissant is a fun idea for a cross-posting tool.

There are others, and I think it shows that it's trying to get off the ground. Some of the account management stuff especially is pretty finicky, and some of the error handling is, I mean, they're working on it really hard hard and I like what they're doing with it but it still I feel like has room to grow and improve so the other one I'm gonna throw in the ring from my side honestly is passwords we asked for a long time for a passwords app instead of having it be a setting in iOS. And it is. And it's pretty good. And I am using it. You know, my biggest complaint about passwords is actually I think maybe it was a bug in the beta,

but it's too late now, which is when I imported it from one password, it seems to have imported my original passwords on all of my accounts and not the most recent one that is the current. So I have to keep one password open every now and then to, because it'll say, oh, this is the wrong password. And I'll go into one password and get the right password and put it in and then update the passwords. It's not ideal.

It's not ideal, but I think maybe that was a beta bug. And I just, I haven't gone back and like wiped it out. It's too late now. I'm just gonna kind of live with it. But I really have liked that integration. And I think they did a pretty good job with the passwords app, even though, you know, anyway, so I'll throw that out there as a possibility.

What do you think? So I have three. One of them I'm gonna mention now, which was on my list, which is ShareShot, but they're a sponsor of today's episode now, which so that would be peculiar Yeah, no, that's good app. Good app. Good app Yeah, but so I will talk about my my love of share shot when I'm actually doing the ad for share shot You know, which is I feel like it's probably the best place for that

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

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

And I think for me, it would be my, the one that I would really push on as like, this is an example of a really good, like just iOS app that solves a good need very well. But I keep coming back to Delta as a thought of, if Delta had come out two months ago, this would be no question. And that would not be a 10%.

That would be significantly more. This app took over the world, but it happened really early in the year. So I think the wave has come down. And I think that is an app which, I mean, because it had been in development and in, you know, forms of release for years was basically perfect at a 1.0. And when it shipped like on the app store, and now they're doing doing things, they're able to add things to the app now and they're working on things

that they're adding to the app now, which are wild. Like the ability to, I think this is coming very soon, the ability to be able to play, say, Nintendo DS games in multiplayer with multiple phones. Stuff like that is really incredible. And so, it's just just this was an app that exploded and it was number one and they were just the iPad app, which is number one again over Christmas in the US.

I saw Riley posting, but it had like a big crescendo because now for a lot of people, including me, it's an app that I have on my phone. And sometimes I can jump into a game if I want to. I feel like if we're looking at the year, this is the app, right? Like this is why I think Mac stories gave it their app of the year. And it's like for similar reasons. Like this Delta was honestly, it's historic as an application to have released on the app store. Like it is a game emulator, a thing we never thought

was gonna happen and not only was it, like because there were lots of them, this one was really good and so I think I would lean towards that as the app that we should give. Okay I am going to say that we should make Croissant and Share Shot, even though it's a sponsor, because I love that app, runners up with the, you know, again, asterisk, yes, it's a sponsor, but seriously, I had just forgotten about that, and I have used that a lot on my iPad to do screenshots.

And then Delta should be the winner. I think you're right. I think it says something about this year, and although it's not new, why is it a newcomer? It's because Apple refused to let it in the App Store until now, I think. No, I'm just gonna head this off, right?

Like, if an app is in beta for two years, does it mean that it can't be a newcomer? No, like, it wasn't on the App Store, it's now on the App Store. We decide what a newcomer is. We've had all sorts of weird things as newcomers. We've had one app win best newcomer twice. Yeah, had all sorts of weird things as newcomers. We've had one app win Best Newcomer twice. Yeah, indeed we have.

Indeed we have. So there it is. For all of that that it says about Riley's persistence and Apple's policies and how fun it is to have classic game emulators. Delta is the winner. Yep, it really is fantastic and well well well deserved. This episode of Upgrade, The Upgradees, the 11th annual, is brought to you by ShareShot. We all take screenshots and we often use them to create content or use them to explain something to someone. Showing a screenshot in context on the device that it was taken on looks just so much better. And ShareShot is an app that puts your screenshots into device frames and places them over pretty backgrounds. It adds perfect fitting device frames to screenshots

for most modern Apple devices, including the Apple Watch, Apple Max, the Apple Max, the Apple Max, Jason, you ever heard of those, the Apple Max? Yeah, is that the M4 Max, Apple Max, MacBook Max? Apple Watch, Max, iPad, iPhone, in many color variants, as well as devices like the Nintendo Switch, the Playdate, and also custom frames that you can make yourself. No matter where you're using screenshots, in blog posts or documentation, presentation slides,

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And it won this year's MacStory Selects Best Design Award. So I take and share screenshots of my devices often for the shows that I do, like for example, State of the Apps, which is on Cortex. And I used ShareShot this year and I was very pleased so like it makes my screenshots look better I think screenshots look better when they do have a device when they're sitting in a device right Federico has had his Apple frames that he's done over the years too what I like about ShareShot is an app that I can go in and tweak really easily

and visually and I love that you know I can say I want the device to look like this, you know, like I want it to be my specific iPhone color, you know, and then I want the background to be this color, I want the background to be that color. But one of the ways that I also use it is via their fantastic shortcut support. So I was able to integrate Share Shot into some screenshots that I was using previously.

So now I can take say four home screens and I can run a shortcut on those images that I've taken and it will frame them all and then lay them in one horizontal image. So I'm able to grab the screenshots, I'm able to make some customization to how they look and frame them all together. It makes my job so much easier and it makes the screenshots that I share just look so much better. ShareShot is available for iPhone with a desktop class UI available for iPad.

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Our thanks to ShareShot for their support of this show and all of Relay. Now, Mike. Yes. Upgrade Plus subscribers will have not heard your ad for ShareShot, but I, as an independent observer, will just point out that ShareShot was a runner-up because it is an excellent screenshot utility that frames your screenshots with the devices, whether it's a Mac or an iPhone or an iPad.

I find it very useful for six colors. It won a Mac Stories award. They obviously find it very useful for six colors. It won a Mac Stories award. They obviously find it useful too. And so outside of the realm of the ad, which is tricky, right? Like we had it last week, we had a thank you to Lex.Games. That was technically an ad, but it was really a thank you. And then we had a whole debate about like,

do we put that in the upgrade plus? Are they gonna be offended because it's an ad? So I'm just saying here outside of the ad that ShareShot is neat and congratulations for being a runner up to its developer, Mark share shot. Oh, this is like new mind stream and this is the new convention for upgrade is its first name. Name of app is the person who created it. They named it after themselves. This is the story and I'm sticking with it. So Mark share shot.

Well done, sir. Congratulations. This is like, uh, I guess this is like, I is the story and I'm sticking with it. So Mark Shershot, well done, sir. Congratulations. This is like, uh, I guess this is like, I don't know. I'm just going to say ancient times, medieval times or whatever, where you'd be named for the thing you did, you know, like you're blacksmith. So your name is Smith. Sparzenegger. Yeah, that's for all the, I don't even know what to say. We're gonna move into best overall Mac app now. And we have a lifetime achievement award winner for Audio Hijack. Yeah.

In this category, so thank you to Audio Hijack. I wanna shout out Audio Hijack because they had a big milestone this year, but we can't award them anything for it, which is they finally after, and Paul Kavasa's told the story on the on the Rogamiva blog they finally after years of working with Apple and explaining why audio hijack and other audio utilities are important on the Mac this year they

finally got a version of Mac OS that has the entitlements and and authorizations required so that you don't have to reboot like eight times and set all of your security settings weird in order to get Audio Hijack installed. Now you can install it without a reboot and I believe Audio Hijack without even putting in your password, you can install it. So big steps forward for Audio Hijack and getting out of sort of Apple getting out of its way, but it's a lifetime achievement winner so it can't win. Sorry, Audio Hijack, sorry. Well, you know, I like what we're doing this year actually of shouting out things about those apps, which would make them into contention anyway, right?

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

And the honestly chaos of installing the app before now through the security restrictions made it really difficult and I think it is great that they've been able to work to get that fixed and it has actually taken the work to get that fixed. Yes. So the Upgradians voted thusly for best overall Mac app at 3% of the vote for MimeStream, 4% for Raycast, and 4% for Pixelmator Pro. Oh, an Apple product.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I don't know what to do with this category. I have four names that I'm gonna throw out, so I guess these are my kind of honorable mentions and then we'll figure out what to do here. So I love MimeStream. I still think it's great.

It got some updates this year. It's my mail client. I think it's really good. I'm looking forward to that iOS version maybe at some point here. I wanna shout out Swift Bar again. My, I wrote some new SwiftBar things for my home solar power system this year.

It's just really great. I can see right now I'm looking at it. I can see the temperature outside. I know how much power my solar panels are generating and I know how many people are listening live to upgrade. Like that, and that's all because of SwiftBar. Really, really great utility app for that sort of thing, putting things in your menu bar.

I wanna shout out RetroBatch from Flying Meat. This is a tool that I use, talking about processing images like with Share Shot. Especially when I'm doing my book, Take Control of Photos, photos have to be in formats. Like for that book, they need to have a border and they need to be below a certain file size and in a certain format.

And I have this a lot. And RetroBatch lets you create basically a, it's like shortcuts kind of, it's like a branching logic tree for your images. And so you can literally save out a droplet onto your desktop and drag and drop images onto it. And it processes them and outputs them in exactly where you want.

Super clever app from the people who brought you Acorn from Gus RetroBatch. Or he's Gus, really he's Gus Acorn. But he also makes RetroBatch. Better than Gus flying meat. Yeah, yeah, no. Please, Gus flying meat's his father. Downy is the other one I wanted to shout out, the Venerable download app. You know, I actually subscribe to, among other things, what

is it, Flop TV, which is the Flophouses, like a live show that they do live on a weekend, and then they put up an archive that you can watch for a week or something like that and I want to watch it in Plex at my leisure I don't want to watch it like on that whatever their thing is that's playing on a computer and stuff like that and so that's that's one of the many great legitimate uses for Downy because you can point it at a URL and it will pull down the video file get it in the right format and then I can put it on my Plex and watch it at leisure URL and it will pull down the video file, get it in the right format, and then I can put it on my Plex.

And watch it at leisure, really great little app. So those are ones that came to mind beyond the usual suspects and the hall of famers. What do you think, Mike? I'm very conflicted this year. This is always the category I struggle with the most. And honestly, the app that has been jumping to mind recently is Pixelmator Pro. But that feels weird now.

I know, right? But I mean, I've been using it to create some graphics for a stream that I'm going to do this week, kind of showing off some journaling stuff. And Pixelmator Pro, for me, is what I want Photoshop to be like 95% of the time, which is significantly more simple. And like just the tools that I want, like I don't want all of the photo editing features, right, that Photoshop has. Neither do I want the generative AI stuff that I do, which is very impressive and I understand why people like it, but it's not what I'm

looking for. And I feel that Pixelmator has the power that I want and the tools that I want in a UI that I can really easily understand. Like genuinely, like we said it at the time, but it is abundantly clear why Apple considers this an app that they would want in their arsenal. Like it is, if Apple wanted to make a Photoshop competitor, they would make Pixelmator. That's what they would do. Yeah, and then maybe why they bought it. I have two other kind of creative tools

that I will throw in as usual. I mean, if you ask me in my heart of hearts what the best overall Mac app is, I will say BB Edit every time. I write in it, I use it as a text utility. I use it for all sorts of text processing, including things like our compilation of awards and things. That's where it all started.

I love it. And I could give it this award every year. But you know, so there it is. And I know I mentioned it once before, affinity designer from serif affinity designer to now I bought it mostly because I had like two things that I did in Adobe Illustrator that I didn't want to do anymore because I Had an old version of Adobe Illustrator and didn't want to pay for the creative cloud version or run illustrator in a virtual machine like And it has since ended up being a tool I use a lot instead of things that I used to do in Photoshop that I thought this is not really appropriate for Photoshop, but I know how to use Photoshop. And now I build that stuff in Affinity Designer instead. It's very, very good at what it does, which is building graphics. It's got vector tools. It's really good. So I'll throw that in

there too. Well I don't know what we do now. Now this category is a problem. So I would say BB Edit has won before. I believe. Oh no, it's been nominated. It's just been nominated. It has never won. Affinity designer has won in the past and so have a selection of Apple apps. So, I mean, and it's not, my funny thing about Pixelmator is not, like I don't wanna not award it because it's an Apple app, but it is just like a funny thing that

not has not actually happened yet, but is obviously going to happen. Yeah, I don't know. I feel strongly for Pixelmator. So did the Upgradians, but I'm, I, this is a category like books where I'm never going to push you, um, to, to award a something of a Mac app, you know, how many mice it would have or something. I don't know how many mice would it have? I hope enough.

Wouldn't want anybody to get angry if they didn't get enough mice. Like I was saying, MimeStream, I understand why people love it and I have loved it in the past, but to me, an email app that just does Gmail is not really an email app for me. Like it's a Gmail app. And so like it's missing a significant feature

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

Yeah, but the email part though, I'm talking about like like using other email surfaces to in that application. And also as well, like I actually I just think the new iPhone mail app is really good Apple What are you doing? Just put it on other platforms. Like I think they've done a pretty good job with the category stuff But yeah, we on that we disagree Yeah, I mean it works for me though. Like it's simple. I'll leave it to people can read what Joe Steele thinks about it on Sixcolors.com. I pretty much agree with him. I think it's a disaster, but okay Everybody uses email differently like for me my email is in Gmail I pretty much agree with him. I think it's a disaster, but okay. I

Everybody uses email differently like for me my email is in Gmail. So Mime stream personally Mime stream supporting other email Services doesn't matter. Yeah But I understand that not everybody uses Gmail, right? So it makes sense. It makes sense I'm gonna accede to the wishes of Mike and the Upgradians Both of whom are against me and we're gonna name pixelmator Pro the winner I wouldn't say where that people are. Nobody is against you. Yeah, I wouldn't really It's all a conspiracy. Right. I see what's happening here. You and the Upgradians you did you open audit the the lists? Maybe you cooked the books for Pixelmator.

It is possible. It was actually something else. It is possible. Pixelmator Pro, I think, as we send it off on its journey into side Apple, who knows what will happen to it, let's give it an award and recognize its great service as an indie Mac app.

It is actually wild that it is never won, considering how long it's been around and how good it has been for that whole time. Right, like that is, it's surprising to me that this is an app that we have not awarded this in this category before, which is a category you always struggle with. And this is like a great app that's just been sitting there

that we never awarded, right? So I think that's it. Speaking of which, BB Edit is the runner up. Yeah, always, always the bridesmaid. One of these days, there won't be any other apps left and it'll have to still be BBedit because it's not going anywhere. Upgrade is 20, you know?

Double X. Let's say, let's put, let's say MimeStream. Yeah, I'm good with that. As the other runner up. Maybe one day Mime Stream, what I really want is for Mime Stream to somehow win best newcomer again.

Get that three times, be lifetime achievement award. If they do that iOS version, they could be a best newcomer in a different category. Yeah, but that won't give it lifetime. Like I don't know what would have to happen. Lifetime newcomer, yeah. Well, Neil Mime Stream is gonna just have to come up with like some way that it't give it lifetime. Like, I don't know what would have to happen. Lifetime newcomer? Yeah. Well, Neil Mimestream's gonna just have to come up with some way that it can be new again,

and then we'll throw it in there. So now let's do the best newcomer Mac app. The Upgradians voted 5% for the Apple Passwords app, 13% for the iPhone mirroring app, and 17% for Chat iPhone mirroring app and 17% for chat GPT. Hmm, interesting. What do you think about this category Mike? I think this is, here's what I'll say,

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

isn't it great that they actually made a Mac app? Yeah, and it's a real Mac app and it's pretty good. It's got stuff that I think needs to be improved. They actually made an app. Like they made an app. And they didn't just say, use the web, right? Like they made an app. They made it before they made their Windows app.

It uses some accessibility features to look on the screen of Windows and process them for you so you don't have to like paste it in. You can say, look at my terminal and do this thing. Again, I want some basic automation. I'd really like to be able to bundle up a query and send it to them via a shortcut or a URL scheme or something like that. I don't think that's in there yet, but I'd love it. They've got it. Yeah, they made an app. It's got a keyboard shortcut so you

can use it like you could use Spotlight or LaunchBar or anything else, Raycast, whatever. Really interesting direction. I agree, actually. I don't, this is not a wholesale endorsement for chat GPT, because, wow, it still really gets some stuff wrong, or reluctantly right. I actually had this, yesterday, we were talking, Jamie asked, How many NFL head coaches are former NFL players? And I thought, this is a very straightforward question. Let's see what chat GPT does with it. And the answer was, it did not give me a wrong answer per se. But I said, How many current NFL head coaches are former NFL players? And it said, There are there are several, here are five. And I said, That's not what I asked, list them all. And then it listed seven, I think it was, or eight. And I was like, okay, I think that's probably right.

Scanning my knowledge of the NFL, I think that's probably a right answer. It got there, but again, there are issues, but there are also places where this stuff can be really useful and interactive. And again, it's not great for everything, but it has its moments. And I also liked the fact that this tech giant And again, it's not great for everything, but it has its moments.

And I also like the fact that this tech giant that could very easily just say, look, desktop apps are the worst. Just type things in a web browser. Like you said, didn't do that. And actually is building and developing apps for platforms. I think that's a good thing. So I agree. I think we should give it to ChatGPT for platforms. I think that's a good thing. So I agree. I think we should give it to chat GPT for Mac. Runners up. Let's say iPhone mirroring. And do you have any

others? I don't. So we could do passwords. Yeah, let's just do passwords. They are they are good features. Yep. Passwords I don't have so much experience with because I'm just stuck in one password at this point. And I'm actually, to a point, happy to continue to be in it. With the amount of... I'm in three different teams. I'm just not going to move at this point. And I am mostly fine with it.

But I'm happy that the passwords app exists. So when I do, cause I do also use Apple's password stuff. And so I like that it's easier to get to than digging through settings. Oh yeah. And you can't have share groups, but it's all,

if anybody is using a non-Apple platform, it's no good. It's not the same, right? Like they have a feature which sounds the same. It's not the same. But it's not. It's not the same. But it's not. And every time I say it, I'm happy you said that

because every time I say this, people contact me and it's like, trust me, if you think it's the same, you're just not using it the way I am. Like you're not, you're not doing that. But that's why I phrase it the way I did, which is they have it, it's not good. It's just not, it's just, it's there, but it's not. It's a different thing. It's a different thing.

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

about it. So the Upgradians voted loosely. Environments, so immersive environments is 6.5%. Immersive video, so it's kind of spatial video, immersive video, I guess the things that we've seen, the things that we've watched, 10%. And 36% for Mac virtual display. Not surprised. When it got introduced at WWDC last year, 2023, everybody said that that looked like

it was going to be the best feature. I really do think people were blown away by it from the beginning. And they've updated it so that it's gotten better in the latest Vision OS update. So I'm not surprised that that is a top feature for Vision OS. Yep, got significantly better, right, with the with the ultra-wide. Here's the thing I'm going to say. This might be a strange take. Okay. Because to me, I can see what you're going to suggest in the document.

I'm suggesting the same, so I'm going to spoil your pick, because I need to kind of spoil your pick to make my point, which is Spatial Personas is easily the best feature of Vision OS. I would wonder if many people in our audience who have used Vision OS know other people that have a Vision Pro. I know. I know. Because I think if you have used Spatial Personas, it is obviously the best feature. But I think you have to have somebody in your life that you could have that call with. And the amount of people that you probably know in your life

that have a Vision Pro is a big fat zero. Where we're in the position where a lot of our friends like have these things because we are technology vision professionals. So we have had these calls. It is an absolute transform. Even for me, specifically, it's interesting because you can go back to, I don't know, all the way back to our first use of this in WWDC 2023, where I thought personas as they were then, were the bomb feature. They were going to be the equivalent of digital touch. And

this is for two reasons. One, it wasn't very good in the initial version. And two, in my initial demo, it failed spectacularly, uh, where the person's eyes were facing in one direction and for a moment they had no hair. So like it went real bad. And I was like, no one's going to use this. It's silly. But then they upgraded it very quickly. I think it wasn't even with a software update, which is like an over the air update that Apple did somehow with Vision OS 1, when then the personas could break out of their boxes and it would exist in space. And you could sit and have calls with people and you could look at each other

and you could look at things together. And it really is for me, and I've said this on a couple of shows, I think on this one too, spatial personas are as close as you can get to meeting someone in person without meeting them in person. And the close, and like how close that is, is very close. That me and you can have these calls

and we've done them a bunch of times and it just feels like we hung out together. It really is. There are many very, very impressive things about Vision OS. It is worth remembering that because the story of Vision OS has been odd and that Vision Pro has been odd throughout the year. But all of these things, the immersive environments are the best 3D environments I've ever been in. The immersive video is the best 3D video I've ever seen. And the Mac virtual display, especially in its Vision OS 2 version, is honestly a triumph, like to have

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

to make this better. I don't know if they wanna prioritize this or not, but like one of the things that Zoom can do and that other apps can do is they, and Apple can do it, right? Which is detect your background, lay out a virtual background, right? That's built into the software now.

And then Zoom also has this thing where it basically puts you in an environment so you're meeting instead of happening in little boxes. It's like a table with the cutout, no background of all the people. It's a little weird, but I get what they're going for there. And I wonder if they might do something like that with FaceTime, where like if I'm doing a FaceTime with somebody and some people are in Vision Pro and some people aren't, could we do it where like the person who's not gets kind of cut out and floats and looks kind of like they're a spatial persona, even though they're not? And from their perspective, could they have a view where they could choose to,

instead of having that person in a box, have a kind of like an environment that all the people are in together, you could do either of those or both of those and have them on or off separately. I think there's some stuff they could do to make this more broadly applicable that would be nice because I do think it's a great feature, like you said, that nobody can use because they don't, I mean, there just aren't enough Vision Pro users out there. But we have created a sort of, it comes off

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

not being in a Zoom call with them or a phone call, but like being in the room with them as wild an idea as that is. It feels like it. It's the closest that I have felt to actually spending time with somebody. Like really, the quality difference compared to a FaceTime call or a Zoom call is massive. Really is a very, very good feature. So obviously this is the winner because we feel so strongly about it.

Mac virtual display, good runner up. What do you think about as a second runner up? We've got immersive video and environments there as options. Yeah, I would say... I think environments are a better kind of vision OS thing than a really good 3D video as good as it is. The environments make a huge difference. This episode is brought to you by FitBod.

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The Upgrading has voted with 3% for The Legend of Zelda Echoes of Wisdom, 5% for Astrobot, and 28% for Bellatra. I go to my game expert now. Up upgrade game expert Mike Hurley for his choice for Game of the Year, or choices. Yeah, I have been oscillating back and forth wildly between Astro Bot and Bellatro. Now we did a remaster episode and it was a similar thing and we decided on Astrobot there. And the reason that we decided on Astrobot there is Astrobot is a better overall game

than Bellatro for what you think of as a video game, right? Like it is very joyful. It is a very engaging experience. It is a wonderful 3D platformer. It is the best example of a 3D platformer outside of what Nintendo makes, which is quite an achievement on its own, especially for the team that made this. Astro Bot has existed in different games before.

This is like their first real attempt at something like this. Right. I have great fondness for Astro Bot as a concept because I played the Astro Bot game on the PSVR. Yeah. So good, so good. They had like a pack-in game called Rescue Mission,

which is kind of like a very simple small free Platformer game for PlayStation 5 but this was like their first like real big shot at it and they did just an incredible job Bolotro though is the game I have played Without a doubt the most this year like I probably play an hour of Bellatro a day. Like it is just, it's a game that I play on my commute and it is a game that I play to kind of wind down in the evenings. Like I'll listen to a podcast, play a bit, like, cause it's kind of like a wind down.

I have played thousands of rounds of Bellatro. I win all the time. I'm really good at the game now. played thousands of rounds of Bellatro, I win all the time. I'm really good at the game now. I did a thing where I was scaling through the difficulty levels to unlock things. Now I've kind of gotten to a point where I have a deck, starting deck that I like, and I'm not

playing for anything other than just to play the game. I'm not trying to get better and better. I just like playing through the game and winning. And it's just a glorious video game. So now we go to Julian, my game consultant. I told him about Bellatro. He now has basically, he says he's got like, I forget what completion percentage. It's ridiculous. He is, because he is a true gamer. He has blasted through Bellatro. Very impressive, but it allows me to talk to him about it.

Um, and, uh, I played it a lot. I think my probably most played hours this year is still Marvel Snap, but I've not played that in months. It's, it's all Bellatro now. Not like you though. I am just not a gamer like that. I do. I have limited time for games Uh, I read books instead, but I do I do play volatro. It is great I also want to share for people who don't get a few things that I have some interesting mastodon exchanges about volatro um

first off A good friend friend of the show lex friedman He did a uh a mastodon post four days ago that was, I encouraged my son to play Bellatro. He loves it. Now he wants me to play it. My friends, I truly hate it. I hate it so much.

I don't understand why anyone likes it. Now a lot of people responded to Lex. Yesterday he posted, my son begged me to try it more more to play 10 games with him watching and advising. I did. My friends, I now unironically love Bellatro. Yes. I have one more social media post I want to quote, which is a friend of the show, Ben Rice McCarthy.

And they wrote, first time playing Bellatro, I don't know what the fuss is about. Second time. Okay. I see why people like it, but I'm not sure it's for me. Third time. I would remortgage my house to get that raised fist joker again. Yep. If you know, you know, uh, go ahead, Mike explain. All right.

I want to give kind of a quick crash course in, in Bellator. Like if you've played the game and you don't understand it and you're failing out, like I want to give like some tips to, to, for how to play this game. So one, don't worry about the fact that you don't out. Yeah. I want to give some tips for how to play this game. So one, don't worry about the fact that you don't know poker hands. The game does a decent job in teaching you them, and you also can get by. You can win games.

I've won many games just only playing two pairs. Two pairs, yep. I've won many games with just two pairs. That's it. The main thing comes down to, what are the Joker cards that you get? The Joker cards adapt your score. Your score is you get a count,

which is like the total number of the cards that you've played, right? So if you played, you know, two pairs of, you know, two pairs of sevens, right? So that would be what, 28 plus any modifiers that you can add in. Don't worry about the modifiers now, it's not important. Two pairs of sevens is four? So that would be what 28 plus any modifiers that you can add in. Don't worry about the modifiers now. It's not important.

Two pairs of sevens is four of a kind. So it would be different, but like if you had two sevens and two twos, right? You'd get 14 for the sevens and four for the twos. So you'd have 18 chips. And then the jokers are doing things like giving you more chips or giving you multipliers that increase the total number of chips that you win. And you have a total you need to hit before you run out of hands to play in a round.

To win a game, you're looking to try and get more chips and you're looking to try and get a higher multiplier. Now, as well as the multipliers, you also have jokers that can multiply your multiplier. Exactly. So you have some that will add to your multiplier and some that will multiply your multiplier. Those are really good. The key thing to remember is joker cards are scored left to right in order once the hand has been played. So if you have any multipliers of a multiplier, they go at the far

right end of your Joker line. So then any other consecutive score will be added in and then multiply that at the end. Good tips, good tips. Knowing that is quite knowing basically my big term of Bellatro was understanding that the jokers, the kind of conditions to the jokers are added left to right. Once you've done that and you that and you can reorder them, then you'll start to win. So. Yeah.

It is, the other thing, the other resistance that I see in a Bellatro is that people describe it as a deck builder. It's not a deck builder. And a lot of people are resistant to that and it is absolutely not a deck builder. I called it a roguelike. People said, well, technically a roguelike

is just about adventures with procedurally generated maps. I'm like, okay, you can call it a roguelite if you want to. I think let's not argue about the terms. The reason I brought it up is I also get turned off with the idea that every time you go through, you pick up items and you grind and you end up building something through grinding, which is the thing I hate the most about games is grinding.

Uh, I just want to pick it up and play. This isn't like that. When you start at zero in the beginning of every round, when you die at Bellatria, when you lose a hand, you go back to the beginning and start again. You lose all your jokers, you lose all the modifications you've done. Everything has changed. You're back to zero. What progresses is as you successfully pass certain tests on certain levels, you unlock more items to be put in the random selection that you get.

So there is progression because more items appear that have different functionality, but they're still sent to you randomly. And you still have to start from nothing. And as a result, it's a game you can pick up and play from zero and then put it down when you get to your destination or whatever, and not have to keep in your head the entire multitude or Spend hours grinding in order to build a deck that makes it fun. It doesn't do any of that You also as you wins. Yeah, also as you win games you unlock new decks that have different starting types Yeah, so like again again, it's more game game variants happen as you progress, but but they're not Changing the fundamental that you're at the you're at the start right when you start you have to start from nothing Bolero is the winner Astrobot is a runner-up and What do you think?

Sure fine great done Favorite movie. Okay. The Upgradians voted to 10% for Inside Out 2, 16% for Deadpool and Wolverine, and 22% for Dune Part 2. Okay. Pretty strong. Yeah.

Yeah. My favorites of the year were Deadpool and Wolverine and Inside Out 2 for very different reasons but movies, I loved both of these movies. I am a Marvel guy through and through and this was a great Marvel movie and Inside Out 2, it surprised me with how good it was, to be honest. I was quite blown away by that. So listeners of The Incomparable will know that we did an Inside Out 2 episode and I wasn't on it. I was going to be on it. And then I saw Inside Out 2 and said, you know what?

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

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

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

persona who plays into all of the worst stereotypes. And it becomes a wild success. It's a little producers esque in that way, right? He, he's just sort of like, he's not quite selling out. He is selling out, but he's also sort of selling out to mock the culture, but then it's a success. And there's, and there's a real human story there. But it's also, and that's Jeffrey Wright, I think, is the star of that. It's really great. So that's a great movie. So that's a great movie. I like Deadpool and Wolverine quite a bit. That is the only Marvel movie of the year, but it is a good Marvel movie. This year, Mike, I watched all the Deadpool movies for the first time, because I hadn't seen any of them. And I like them.

I liked the first one a lot. I think it was really fun and worked for me. The second one I enjoyed, but I was disappointed by, because it felt like it was more of the same instead of doing something extra. And also I didn't like the fact that they sideline his girlfriend immediately. It's like, no, no, you're boring.

Love of his life, you're boring. We'll get rid of you and then continue with the story. And I was like, that made me mad. It's not like alien three levels of invalidating the emotional stakes of the previous movie so that you can, so that your movie can have fun stuff happening in it. But it was, it was there.

Those vibes were there. And then Deadpool and Wolverine did a whole, incomparable about all three of these movies, individual episodes about all three of these movies, individual episodes about all three of these movies. Good movie, funny, surprisingly heartfelt. And I think that in general, that's the thing that surprised me about the Deadpool movies is they are not just,

they're not cynical joke machines. They are funny. They like to make you believe they're going to be, which I think is true. Yes, they do. They are funny. They like to make you believe they're going to be, which I think is the truth. Yes, they do. They are funny and violent, but there is an emotional core in all of them that's very important.

And Godzilla, and Godzilla minus one, yeah. Also true, actually. Deadpool and Wolverine has emotional content. It's very funny and it is very violent, but violent in a silly way. It's the kind of movie where something terrible happens that's violent and I laugh at how ludicrous the violence is. Whereas I don't like as much movies

where the violence is very realistic and emotionally stressful. That's not this kind of movie. And yeah, surprisingly emotionally resonant and surprisingly really honoring Logan, which was a wonderful final movie about Wolverine, again, an adult movie, but with Logan in it, just like Godzilla minus one is an adult movie

with Godzilla in it. You could argue this movie desecrates the grave of that movie because it literally does and and yet that's not the case it actually honors it and I think that was a neat trick so that's my that's my two minutes on Deadpool and Wolverine it's a good movie I think I think I would push for Deadpool and Wolverine because while we make the rules ourselves, you're, you're picks a role from last year. Um, well, I don't care about that because I know, you know, I'm not. And so like, if you would not have just spoke for two minutes about how much you enjoyed Deadpool and Wolverine, then maybe we, you know, we'd, we'd take a look at that

list and see if we could, is there something, but I really liked Deadpool and Wolverine. And maybe we'd take a look at that list and see if we could, is there something? But I really liked Deadpool and Wolverine, you did, and so did the audience, which would make you feel like we could do that rather than, you know. So Doom Part II, also really great. I had a great experience seeing that movie, big screen, beautiful. And so I'm gonna say, let's give it to Deadpool

and Wolverine, but I want Dune part two, which was the Upgradients choice. And I also really endorse it. And I want to put Godzilla minus one in there because it was great. Yeah, I've been meaning to watch that movie, but I haven't gone around. I've got to see it. It's so good. I wanted to watch it last year and then kind of couldn't get it for a long time because

it was like, it was unavailable for contract long time because it was like it was unavailable for contractual reasons because there was a an american godzilla movie that came out and there was some rule about how they can't release the they couldn't release the video version of godzilla minus one because they were in the blackout period because of the american movie super dumb yeah it was a really self-defeating for everybody involved. All right, great. Moving now to the easiest category. This is just the slam dunk, open and close category.

Other than that we have to have, we have to have runners up. Yeah. But other than that, yeah. Easy peasy. This is favorite TV show. The upgrading is at 7% for Shrinking, 9% for Slow Horses, and 11% for Shogun. Mm-hmm.

It's easy. Shogun is not just the best TV show I've seen this year. It's one of the best TV shows I've ever seen. Like unbelievable television show. Easy peasy. I agree. like unbelievable television show. Easy-paisy. I agree. I think Shogun is the show of the year. It's so good. I love that it's, among other people, it's

Justin Marks who did Counterpart, which is one of the criminally missed, fantastic best shows of the last decade. He was brought in by his wife when they went into rewrites with it. I love that he was involved with this because this got all the acclaim that Counterpart deserved and didn't get. I think it's our winner. We do need to pick some runners up. Sure.

I was, I had, um, I had Tim Goodman on downstream for Christmas special. Great. And, uh, I, I did my sort of like short list of, which wasn't that short of my favorite shows of the year. Um, so I'm'm gonna quickly run them down here and then we'll pick some runners up. So, Silo on Apple TV Plus, season two is excellent. A little slower than season one for some good reasons, but that's a really good show. Very impressed. did not think that would be much of anything

and it's actually very good. Bad Monkey on Apple TV+, based on a Carl Hiaasen novel, Vince Vaughn, it's so good. Like it's just, it's so good. Funny at Florida. The perfect Vince Vaughn TV show. It is so good. It is perfect.

Perfect use of Vince Vaughn. It's like all of his good, you know? All of his good. It's like Will Ferrell. I know some people don't like Vince Vaughn. This is the, like Will Ferrell in Elf, this is the perfect use of the skills of Vince Vaughn. He is great in it.

Really good. He is the main character, but he's surrounded by, it's, you know, it's a mystery and it's sort of sleazy because it's the Florida Keys and there's intrigue, but also it's laid back. It's so good. I cannot recommend Bad Monkey highly enough. It's probably the second best show I watched

other than Shogun last year. I really love Dark Matter on Apple TV+. Again, I was reluctant to watch it for a while. And then we started watching it and we burned through those like an episode of night because the elevator pitch is what if your life was stolen from you by yourself? And as you might expect, I just praised counterpart, parallel universes come into play here. And in the first episode, right? It's not really a mystery.

In the first episode, parallel universes come into play here. What I love about Dark Matter is that it fully commits to the premise. Instead of saying sort of like, well, yeah, there's science fictional parallel universes in it, but really this is about, this is a character drama. And so we're gonna not talk about the implications of the parallel universe machine. We're gonna just focus on the characters. And look, you should focus on the characters. That's the most important thing. But you could also not ignore the implications of the parallel universe machine as well.

And Dark Matter, and I admire it greatly, does not ignore the implications of the parallel universe machine at all. I thought it was really good. It's based on a novel. The showrunner of the show was the guy who wrote the novel. And it adapts the novel and much to my surprise, they renewed it for a second season. So like Shogun, a show based on a novel that adapts the entire novel in one

season, and it's so good that they're like, yeah, make something up for season two. So it's going to come back. Um, love that. And, and some others I want to mention, Hacks on Max. Very funny, just a great show about women in comedy. I love it. I couldn't love it more. I'm so mad about this, Jason.

I'm so mad about this. So Hacks was on Amazon Prime in the UK. They have not picked up season three. And nobody has. So season three is just completely unavailable. You can't even buy it here. So I loved hack season one and two, but you can't watch the season. Cause they want to have a launch of max version or have a partner that's doing a max version in the UK. Well, they do already sky, but sky,

but it's not on my pick up specific things. I don't understand why they do this, but no one's got hacks. So it's come with it. Well, VPNs are available anyway. Yeah, but I have to have an account, right? No, that's true. That's true. That's I can't sign up for max.

So anyway, it doesn't help me. Gene smart, Hannah, Ibender are great in that. And then that is part of the greater Mike Schur universe because it's some people who work with Mike Schur on The Good Place and other places that are doing that show. It's great. Yeah, third season was awesome. Shout out to Slow Horses, which continues to be

So good. fantastic every season. My other Apple TV Plus thing I'll shout out, I really liked Masters of the Air. I didn't think I would. I was like, oh boy, it's a World War II drama again, just like Band of Brothers and The Pacific, from the same producers.

It was really good. It was really well done. That was, you could see Apple's money on the screen with that one. I was very impressed. That's a mini series. It was really good. I have two Netflix picks. The Diplomat came back for season two, a little short,

but I like it. I really like that show. They're already shooting season three. Carrie Russell as an American. If you haven't seen the show, there's also season one. You'd start there. You should start there as an unlikely choice to be the US ambassador to the UK, because she's usually from conflict filled regions of the world. There are reasons why she's gotten this job. I also just delight in the fact that she feels ill-suited for it and seeing her be confronted with the things she's supposed to wear to various formal events when she's used to being like running around in blue jeans in some, you know, far off region of the world. It's delightful.

And I also really liked a man on the inside on Netflix, which is Mike Schurr, as mentioned before, this is with Ted Danson. It's very sweet comedy about, it's about a mystery at a retirement home, but also it's about old people and finding ways to live their lives after traumatic events. And I think it's very sweet. It's not sad. It's as much as it is just sweet. Really good. Great use of San Francisco locations. And finally, much to my surprise, season two of Shorzy, the Letter Kenny sp-off on Hulu in the US at least.

I was kind of left cold by season one of Shorzy. Why would you do a spin-off about a one-joke character in Letter Kenny, which was I think finished this year and is an all-timer. I love Letter Kenny so much. Shorzy season two, I really got into it. I kind of got what they were selling. It's like a, it's a sports movie as a TV show. It's about a bunch of kind of adult, minor league hockey players trying to win a tournament. And there's many, it's just very silly and there are many jokes and I love it. So sure is he.

And if you haven't seen Leonard Kenny, go watch Leonard Kenny, it's great. You mentioned about being sweet, right? Like a thing that is sweet. You said that for what? Man on the Inside? Man on the Inside. For me, Shrinking is that Shrinking. Yes. Season two is really, really, really, really good. I was very surprised actually of how good it is. That cast is just like so good.

I, this may be- Unbeatable cast. People may disagree with me here, but like this is my opinion. This is my favorite thing I've ever seen Harrison Ford in. I think this is him perfectly. Kind of the mixing of the actor and the man. Like it feels like he fits so well in this role.

It lets him use muscles that I think most movie people just aren't gonna bother asking him for. Yeah. It's like, oh yeah, what if Harrison Ford, treasure of an actor was a supporting character on a sitcom? And you're like, well, why would he do that? Well, we don't know why.

Apple Money just wanted, I think, for the challenge of doing something different. And guess what? He nails it, because he is actually a great actor. And it isn't just, and it's actually him in that, in Shrinking, which is great. I didn't like season two as much as season one, but I do love it.

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

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

but also a lot more hot. I just, so you said about using Harrison Ford. I actually saw a thing with Jason Siegel yesterday where, and he was talking about Harrison Ford being in shrinking. It was just, you know, like whenever you work on a project, you're always, you start with, uh, if we could cast this person, how amazing would it be? And you always reach out to that person and they always say no. And so then it, which is fine because then you at least for two days get to say, you know, we asked Harrison Ford and he said no, but he said Harrison Ford said

yes. And then they had to rewrite the show because Paul was not in the show very much and like, well, now we have Harrison Ford. So then it became a co-lead is essentially the way that he says like, you know, now it's the two of them, right? That they are both doing leading roles where Paul was just much more of a mentor figure. You saw him sometimes. So I thought that was really interesting. Just like what that was like. Yeah. So Shrinking I loved. Um, and I also just wanted to throw out, uh, the Penguin too. Oh yes. Which again, I have not seen it. My son loves it. I will say, I've said this to a lot of people,

if you like kind of mob, gangster stuff, but think I don't want superheroes, then you're fine. Because there are no superheroes in the show. It's just people. Yeah. Okay, let's give it to Shogun. We already tabulated that. We mentioned a bunch of other things.

I think I'm going to suggest we go with... Well, let's do... Okay, why don't we do Shrinking and Bad Monkey? Yeah, that's a good one. I enjoyed that. I think it's something new. So the winner of the favorite TV show of the year is Shogun and Shrinking and Bad Monkey are the runners-up. Yeah

Good stuff time for favorite book Your favorite category. Yeah, did you read a book this year Mike? Yeah, I actually have a recommendation, but it's like, oh, yeah It's called how to be a dad Which is a book that I've been really enjoying. It's by a British doctor, Dr. Oscar Duke. And it's just a, it's a book that I have enjoyed a lot. It is written in a way that I really enjoy that he is a doctor and he also became a dad for the first time. And so the book is written from both perspectives. So you have like a chapter about a certain element of pregnancy or like newborn life and he writes it as a dad and he writes it as a doctor. And so you kind of get both sides of it.

And it's just a very relatable, very easy book. And I enjoyed it a lot. And it doesn't fall into too many of the tropes that I have found this kind of stuff to be, which is just kind of like, don't call your wife fat. It's like, this is not, I don't need that information, you know, which is like a lot of what like dad like focused stuff is. Um, and I actually have, I found out a lot of really helpful interesting things from this book and so I recommend it to people that are in my particular circumstances but this was a book published in 2019 so you know okay

that's fine it does you read it this year sure it's all that matters uh-huh the upgradians I forgot to do thegradians because I got so excited. No, no, I derailed you. It's fine. With 4% Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Tchaikovsky? 6% Wind and Truth by Brandon Sanderson and 8% The Armageddon Protocol by Dan Moran. Dan Moran's annual appearance.

You love some, I like, I enjoy the ballot boxes being stuffed personally. I, yes, I'm really thrilled because my favorite book that I read this year made the Upgradians list. That is rare, that usually does not happen. No, no, Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky. First off, Adrian Tchaikovsky is probably the best science fiction writer going right now.

Science fiction, fantasy, he does a whole bunch of stuff. I've read a lot of his stuff the last couple of years. He's very prolific and he's so good. And Service Model, I went into it not knowing what it was at all. And then about a chapter in, I thought, well, this is funny because he's taking us from the perspective

of a robot, and why robot logic and computer logic could lead to ridiculous outcomes. It really is the idea of like, okay, so yeah, robot apocalypse, got it, got it, but how would that happen? And he takes you through the mind of the robot who's helping kind of with the apocalypse. And it's ludicrous. And I thought, well, he can't keep this up for the whole book. And he keeps it up for the whole book. It's great. It's funny. It is about the end of the world.

So there's a lot of like, you got to laugh at the absurdity to keep from crying from the tragedy of everybody dying, basically. But takes you really deep inside the robot apocalypse. When there are almost no humans left, what do the robots do? And the answer is, wow, they do a lot of stupid things because they're robots. It's very funny. And it's sort of a series of adventures

that this robot has, where he goes from place to place to place to seek out the source of the robot apocalypse sort of I don't know it's great I love it it should be the winner I'll shout out a couple other books I really love this year that didn't that one of which at least was not printed this year but I don't care I read it this year I read Titanium Noir by Nick Harkaway, who is John Le Carre's son and actually had a new book in that universe that he wrote, that came out this year that got all the press.

But he's also apparently writing a sequel to Titanium Noir, which I really loved, great book. It's very funny, I just went to like, put it in the show notes and on Amazon, it's Titanium Noir, a Titanium Noir novel. It's like, okay. Yes, well, it's now Titanium Noir number one because there's going to be a number two.

It is just very funny. It's like, no, you're kidding, no way. It's great. It's like, it's the future and income inequality means that although there's a cure for death now, only the richest people can get it, and it makes them taller every time they get a round of their treatment.

Oh, I'm going to love this book. So you end up with these, these like Titans that walk the earth that are like 10 feet tall and rich and immortal. And one of them dies and our schlubby noir detective has to figure out who and why. That's a really good premise. I like the sound of this book. That would make a good TV show.

It's great. It's so good. And Nick Harkaway is such a good writer. All these stories about like, oh, John Le Carre died, but his son is going to write a novel. Speaking of Dune, right? Because that's what happened with Dune is Brian Herbert came in. Here's the thing about Nick Harkaway. He's such a brilliant writer. He is a brilliant writer. It has nothing to do with him being related to his dad. I think it's kind of amazing that he decided to write a book in his dad's world

because he's really great on his own. I mean, he really is a treasure of a writer, great writer. Book I just finished this week that I turns out sliding right in under the wire as one of my favorite books of the year is called The Book of Love by Kelly Link. It is a dark, it's an urban, it's kind of like a suburban fantasy. It's a, uh, it reminded me of, uh, Neil Gaiman or the, the more fantastical

and less horror of Stephen King might be a good comp as well about some teenagers in a seaside town in New England. I know it feels like Stephen King, doesn't it? Who apparently died, but have now come back to life and are trying to figure out why and how and what happens next. And I thought it was really great. What was that book called?

The Book of Love by Kelly Link. That's a fun title. Kelly Link Pulitzer Prize winner and winner of a MacArthur Genius Grant. So not exactly an unknown quantity, but the book, I think this might have been her first novel or her first intentional novel. It's great. Good book. So A Service Model is obviously the winner, right? Yeah. And then let's put in How to Be a Dad. No, we don't need to do that. We really don't need to do that. Let's put it in the actual books.

We'll look back later. OK, then let's say we'll put in Armageddon Protocol by Dan Morin, of course. And let's put in one of Dan Morin's favorite authors, Titanium Noir by Nick Harkaway, as our runner's up. Dan, I'll get a kick out of that. Being alongside that book. Favorite podcast

Sometimes this is hard because our lifetime achievement winners are ATP in the flop house, which means that Two of the podcasts I listen to regularly or are out of contention the rebound came in at I'm just gonna say it the ballot boxes have been stuffed this year in this category. You think so? 12% is this very show upgrade and at 19% is connected. I was, I was present for some of the, the ballot box stuffing on connected, but unfortunately this is, this is another open and close. I'm sorry to say because, oh boy, I have been mainlining the rest of this history.

Like, I started listening to this show on my vacation, kind of around Thanksgiving. It is essentially the only podcast that I've listened to. So to give you, and just to let you know, right, because I can do the overcast stats thing, right? So this has been since, like this has been what? Five weeks, right? In five weeks, I have listened to 57 hours of The Restless System. So... More than 10 hours a week. I love it. Yeah. Yeah. It's the only podcast I'm listening to right now. My backlog right now is

horrific because I am just, I am just, I cannot even describe how much I love the show. And this funny thing for me is I have, this was already going to be a difficult category for me. I have five podcasts that I wanted to call out in this list, which I would do it. But the rest of this history is just perfect. I love that show so much. Thank you for introducing into me. It is now particularly funny. Now I've listened to so much when I go back and think about the holiday special from last year, which was in the style of that show, right? The, the colors ours, because now I kind of, I get it. There's like so many jokes that I didn't get, which is, which is very funny. Uh, but yeah, I, I am loving this show. There is like so many good

seasons. What I have noticed though, Jason, I don't know if you've noticed this, there is, there was obviously a shift in the style of the show, kind of late 2023, because I've gone back kind of to early 2023 and the episodes are like, hey, we're just going to talk about this. Like the two of them are just having a conversation about something where now the show is more, we're going to tell you the story of this thing that happened. So like, there's a, there's, they did, they did two, they have two series about the Nazis. They did like, how did it, how did it, how did

we get to the Nazis? And then what happened? And they were like a year apart from each other. And so I went back to the episodes early 2023, which were like, um, how did we get to the Nazis essentially? And in those, it's like the two of them are having kind of a conversation about it. And like, well, what did you think? What did you think? And then the like, what happens in the Nazis takeover? It is, they're kind of taking it in turns

to tell the other one the history of the thing that happened. And I much prefer that style. They've changed their form. I think it's great, yeah. I haven't listened to too many of those past episodes, but it's fine. The personalities are great. I mean, it's got all think it's great, yeah. I haven't listened to too many of those past episodes, but it's fine. The personalities are great. I mean, it's got all the things a great podcast has.

That's what's, what I love about The Rest is History is it is the type of show that I like, which is a couple of people who have very good chemistry talking to each other about something that they care a lot about. And it's about a thing that I don't have too much knowledge about a lot of the things that I've listened to. Like, you know, stuff like World War II I know, and you know, like some of the Cold War stuff I know, JFK I knew about, but I knew nothing about the Aztecs. And now I know a

bunch of stuff. Yeah, let me tell you about Carthage. Yeah, there's so many things. I mean, so I will say there is stuff that I've realized that like, oh yeah, no, like for example, that a lot of like the Roman stuff is like, I just can't attach to that. It's too far gone. Like I started listening to one, an episode about like the Romans invading Britain and it's like, they're talking about countries that don't exist. Yeah. And it's like, I can't, I can't keep this information in my hand. Um, so I kind of, I like, yeah, but anyway, this show is just fantastic, but I had other shows that I wanted to mention. Okay. Similarly from goal hanger, the rest is politics. This was going to be my pick because I started listening to this show at the beginning of the year

when we had the election in the UK, cause I wanted like some more information kind of what is going on. And I found this show and it's the same idea, right? It's two people who are very knowledgeable, because they have both been in British politics. And I really like that they come from two, they're both kind of like center, well, one, they like center left and center right as kind of figures. And I like that because they come at it from different points and they can actually have a debate, which is helpful, I think, for politics. But also that neither of them are too far in one direction,

that it becomes like a fight. So I really appreciate that show for that. I wanted to shout out NPC, Next Portable Console, which is a Federico, John, and Brendan show about portable gaming console, which is a Federico John and Brendan show about portable, portable gaming systems, which I love. My very first podcast has come back Dignation Dignation is back, which is like amazing. Like it just for this show to just reappear after all this time is fantastic. That's been a lot of fun for me because it's, it's incredible that it feels like the show hasn't changed, even though they've not done it for like,

I don't know, nearly 10 years or something. And then I just got a shout out to town as well, which is always, always there, always there. Great year for me. Yeah. So what, what are our runners up here? Uh, I would like to suggest the rest is politics because that was going to be my other vote and then the other one, whatever you want it to be. All right. Uh, well, if I look at my top four podcasts of the year in overcast, two of them are lifetime achievement award winners.

One of them is the rest is history. And so congratulations to Connected for being a runner up. So the funny thing about this and why Stephen has been like really putting this out there is I think Connected is one win away from lifetime achievement. I think that's that's the situation. Yeah, but yeah, it ain't happening this time. I'm afraid. This episode is brought to you by data citizen dialogues, which is a podcast,

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We now move into Favorite Apple Product of the Year. The Upgradians voted 10% for the M4 MacBook Pro, 16% for the M4 iPad Pro, and 33% for the M4 Mac Mini. Well, I don't know about you, Mike. I mean, good year for Apple products. I got an angry bit of feedback from a listener because we were listing our favorites over at Six Colors. We were all listing sort of our favorite hardware of the year and none of us chose to write up the super thin all-time winner M4 iPad Pro, which is cool.

You know, I love how thin it is, and I love how bright that beautiful, you know, new screen is. It's all good, but I chose to write up the Magic Keyboard instead. write up the Magic Keyboard instead. And my reasoning was, if I, if somebody told me I had to give up my M4 iPad Pro, what would be the one thing about it that I would miss the most? And it wasn, the iPad pro M four is, is great. Like there are a lot of things to be said for it. Um, I do love that than it is. It's, it's really good. I love it. You know, I use my iPad all the time.

Um, I bought an M four MacBook pro coming to you. We'll talk about this. I am sure in future episodes, but I am docked with a MacBook Pro at my desk. Now this is my life now, Mike. So do I like that product? Yes, I do. I think M4 Macs is really good, but who are we kidding?

I feel like the Apple product of the year is the Mac mini. I feel like it has to be the Mac mini. It is so remarkable. Not only do the upgradients say that, but like to finally make a new Mac mini and have it be so tiny and yet so powerful with the M4 Macs or M4 Pro version of it, like is way more power than anybody,

you know, than anybody needs for regular life. Like you can max out that Mac Mini, and it's this incredibly powerful little tiny thing. So cool and so useful, and I know a lot of people who don't have any use for a Mac Mini who still want one. So I feel like that is good. Also, my understanding is that you also have ordered a Mac Mini, is that true?

Yes, we will talk about this in Upgrade Plus today. But yeah, I have actually made the order that I've been threatening to make for months now and I have actually ordered the M4 Mac Mini. Which is why I would very happily give it to that product. It's not my choice because I've not used it, but I do really appreciate that product, so I think it's fantastic. For me, my favorite Apple product of the year is the M4 iPad Pro. Oh, there you go.

It's my first iPad Pro with a very good screen like that. I didn't have an OLED iPad Pro. I didn't have the mini LED iPad Pro before now. So like the 11 inch specifically, I adore that iPad. How thin it is, how light it is, and how powerful it is, and how good it looks. But yeah, the Mac Mini is clearly a very special product. And so I'm very happy to give that the Apple product of the year, but I would like to put the iPad Pro in as a runner up. Absolutely. And the MacBook Pro I would like to put in as a runner up. I'll talk about my Mac Mini purchase on Upgrade Plus today. Oh good.

Favorite non-Apple product of the year. This is a tricky one. This is a tricky one. This is always a tricky one, but it's a fun one too. So the Upgradients voted with 4% for the OLED Steam Deck, 4% for the Google Pixel 9 family, and 6% for the Meta Raybans. I was surprised to see the Meta Raybans take the thought spot here, but I was pleased about that. Was there any ballot stuffing from Connected in that?

Maybe. Well, I mean, the ballot stuffing that I'm talking about is where specifically people are asking for votes, not just that they've been influenced by listeners of the show. I'm not shilling for Meta. Okay. What do you think here? So I could make a case for the Meta Ray bands. I think they're a very interesting product. I like mine a lot. Federico loves his and wears them every day. I use mine just as sunglasses.

So my options are limited, but being able to take photos and listen to music. And like when I was on vacation, I was listening to the rest of this story by the pool via my sunglasses, which was just a great experience like that, that it is a very, very good product. Take the AI out of it. It's still a good product at the AI in and it can do more stuff, but you know, whatever. I'm going to pick an, my favorite product of the year though is something completely different. It's called the Oslo Sleepbuds.

And that's Oslo with a Z, of course. I mean, why would it not be? Bose used to make a product that I've forgotten what it was called, but it was a, they were sleeping headphones and they essentially just played white noise. They stopped making this product. So the entire team that made it when I made their own company called Oslo to make the new version of what that would be. So by the way, they were called the Bose sleep buds. There you go. So, you know, uh, I don't, I I'm expecting that there was an agreement So, you know, uh, I don't, I, I'm expecting that there was an agreement made between all these. Like I don't just think that they just went and did it. Um, this product feels like a startups product. It is not by any means a kind of very complete

feeling product, but they are very comfortable to wear when sleeping. They're like very, very thin and they've got, they're very comfortable. They don't go in your ears, they sit on your ear and they have those kind of wing tips to hold them in. And they have an app and the app comes with a selection of white noise that you can play or like different sounds like I listen to the sound of an ocean and I find them to be really comfortable that you can also you can use them as Bluetooth headphones so you could be listening to something else you could be watching something else they have a feature that I've not used but I like that it's there and it I've seen mixed results but some people say

it works and some people say it don't that it detect there and I've seen mixed results, but some people say it works and some people say it don't. That it detects that you've fallen asleep and pauses what you're listening to and it activates the white noise. There are things about it that are not ideal. Like for example, you have to open the app and then like open the case and then they connect and then it will work. Like, and also, you know, I said it to just to play for an hour

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

and that provide me with a white noise experience. These are it. So I really love this product. It's a fun little tech product that I've used this year, the Oslo Seedbloods. Wow. That's fun. Yeah. It's nice to find something like that. Here is a tech solution to a problem that I want solved made by people who care so much about it that they want to start their own company to do it

All right, I Thought of four things great. I'm sure there's something that I've forgotten I'm sure of it, but I thought of four things The me you mini plus which we talked about in Upgrade Plus last week. This is a little tiny handheld game emulating thing that is like super cheap on AliExpress and was on sale, so it was super duper cheap when I bought one. Gave that to my son for Christmas. I think he's into it. Really good, just a good build. The buttons are good.

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

but they know that people install it and it's really good and then it's got a whole bunch of different emulators on it. Just, I'm very impressed with that product. There are a lot of, I don't have a lot of nostalgia for handhelds, which is part of my problem with all of these products is that they're like, oh, it looks just like a Game Boy, or it looks just like, what's the fold open one? Anyway, it doesn't matter. Game Boy or it looks just like what's the fold open one anyway it

doesn't matter. Game Boy Advance. I don't have nostalgia for those little handhelds so I'm more into it for having it be a handheld that is fun that runs a bunch of games especially old arcade games and old console games, less than I am running, you know, Game Boy games, because I have no nostalgia for Game Boy games. But that hardware is really good and I love this category. So I wanted to mention it. Very impressive. And there are other styles.

There's ones that are shaped more, you know, horizontal, more like a Steam Deck that do, you know, PSP emulation and all sorts of other emulation but like the two things that I ended up playing the most on the new mini plus when I had it were joust classic arcade console game and NFL blitz 2000 which was my favorite game for the ps1 so That's the kind of stuff I gravitated toward I tried to play pac-man on it and realized like Gameboy pac-man You like they pan around the screen. You can't see the whole screen because they couldn't do that. I was like, oh yeah, little handhelds

can't do that stuff, can they? We can do better. I mentioned my Everlites experience where I put lights on my house. That was a fun tech product this year that I used that put lights on my house, which permanent lights, holiday lights, I program them. It's currently Hanukkah. I have built my own Hanukkah pattern that shows how many candles there are. It's really cool. I love it.

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

into the combustion chamber, and it's got a fan, so it can control the combustion. And it's got a fan so it can control the combustion. And it's all done by this little computer that has Wi-Fi and I'll talk to your phone and they have an app and the app is surprisingly not terrible because most of these apps are terrible. And I used it over the holidays, it worked really well, but I like, I was delighted by the fact that not only was the, this little computer, you know, that the buttons on the on the grill itself are very clear, but that the app is good and you can control, other than the

initial ignition, you can control it all from the app and it does a pretty good job. So that was a fun gadget. And then finally I threw it in here because it delights me. That Belkin Vision Pro case ensured that head strap thing too. The two products that got released that are literally, Apple says you should make this. And that clearly should have been what Apple shipped when they shipped the Vision Pro. But instead they shipped the big puffy marshmallow case

and a really kind of weird misguided set of head straps instead of just using that knit strap with an over-the-top strap simultaneously. I thought that was it makes me laugh that those products have to exist but they're also pretty good. Okay. So from your list I really like the Belkin products. Yeah. Like I think they should be in the conversation. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, my suggestion was gonna be that we give it to the MetaRay bands. Yep. Cause that sounds like a product that actually people like and that you like. And it's good. And that is doing something interesting.

Yeah. And then we can make your sleep buds and the Belkin stuff, the runners up. Love it. That's good. And that is doing something interesting. Yes. Yeah. And then we can make your sleep buds and the Belkin stuff, the runners up. Love it. That's fun. What a fun category. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, Apple, you gotta do something

in these smart glasses. Like, what are you doing? I know, right? No, the AirPods that you wear as glasses. Like. That tie into Siri on your phone and Apple intelligence and all of that. And that can, they're AirPods that you wear as glasses that tie into Siri on your phone and Apple intelligence and all of that. And that can, they're AirPods that you wear as glasses.

They don't even need a display, right? That'll come, but they don't even need a display. Like Apple, yes, I don't say this that often, but I think I said it a few weeks ago and I'll say it again here, which is if I were at Apple in a position of authority, I would say, we'll draw on the inspiration of the iPod. By the end of 2025, we need, by the holidays of 2025, we should be shipping AirPods glasses. Yeah. Period. Make it happen. I don't care. Like, take the innards of AirPods. And like, and honestly, if you're working on a new version of AirPods, stop, put it on hold and do this instead, cause AirPods are great.

The existing shipping AirPods are fine. Stop it. You can build a product and get it going and ship it by the end of the year. Let's use all the power with an Apple to make that product happen. Simplify and miniaturize the work that you did to get the speakers in a Vision Pro, right? So you like, you know how to do that. It doesn't Apple to make that product happen. Simplify and miniaturize the work that you did to get the speakers into Vision Pro.

Right? So you know how to do that. It doesn't need to be that good. Right? You know how to make a speaker that fires into the ear. Right? Or you did a bunch of research about bone conduction and decided not to go for it. Maybe that works for these and you can use that instead.

But the guts of it are going to be AirPods. That's all. And ship it. Like do it now. I don't understand, this is one of my frustrations. I know that Apple is a big company and things are complex. I get it, but one of my frustrations about Apple is, and it may be to their overall harm in the long run,

is they seem incapable of doing something with speed. They seem incapable of making things happen that are obviously weaknesses addressing them quickly. They didn't address the butterfly keyboard, for example. That's a classic example. But I would argue the smart home stuff, like they're talking about this display. How long has it been since the Echo Show came out? Like this was an obvious place for them to go years ago. And they, I guess decided not to, or they just decided to put their toe in it,

but like they could have made that product happen. And this is another case where like, look, Meta figured it out, AirPods but glasses. And I don't know whether it's like, well, no, we thought about that and decided not to do it. And so now that Ned is doing it, we're really never gonna do it. Well, that's stupid. That's stupid. And it now that Ned is doing it, we're really never gonna do it.

That's stupid, that's stupid. And it's not the Vision Pro. It's a totally different approach to putting something on your face. But for people who don't wanna wear the AirPods, they could wear this instead and they get an AirPods experience. It really is, that's why I described it as AirPods glasses

because think of it like that. I don't, I just went, and then Mark Gurman comes out and says, yeah, think of it like that. And then Mark Gurman comes out and says, yeah, they're looking at that. It'll be out in two or three years. I'm like, what are you doing? Yep, too slow. What are you doing? Too slow.

Worst gadget or most disappointing technology. The Upgradians voted of 11% for the Vision Pro, 12% for artificial intelligence as a whole, and 15% for the Humane AI Pin. The Humane AI Pin, which was introduced in 2023 but shipped in 2024. The Humane AI Pin won this category in 2023. Amazing. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. Amazing.

Which honestly makes this really tantalizing as a possibility to give it the award twice, but I want to make a pitch. Okay. Image Playgrounds. Oh, wow. Image Playgrounds is the most disappointed that I've been in technology this year. Like I said, this is the show, I've heard me say it many times, so I'm not going to go into it in a lot of detail, but I just think that I don't think Apple, a lot of people

write in Apple Intelligence, but not enough to get into the thing. But like, I don't think Apple Intelligence on the whole has been bad, but I think Image Playgrounds is bad. I think it is not a good, it is not a good use of this kind of technology. It's not good enough. And it undermines, in my opinion, some of the good work that Apple have done, like with genmoji, which is a fantastic thing. I think it is really great. I think that image playgrounds is just not worth it. And so they shouldn't have shipped it. And so I disappointed in that feature.

Yeah, I mean, I don't think it's very good either. It's absolutely true. I don't I mean, I guess if you got your hopes up, the Vision Pro is disappointing, but I think it is exactly what we thought it was initially, which is a developer kit. That's, I actually think it's kind of great, but nobody should buy it, right? Which is how do you, am I disappointed by that? No.

The Vision Pro is exactly what it should have been. The things that have been disappointed is what came after that wasn't, well, some of it's Apple, but not the hardware. Wasn't enough content. There wasn't enough apps like they can, they can to a point, do better in these areas. But like the vision pro specifically, it is exactly what was promised. And maybe a better than like, it's just like hardware software, how it works, but it is the, the content that was the the thing that was Yeah failure to it. Yeah. Yeah, I agree

Well, I'm I'm okay with image playground being the winner in this category because I agree I I am I Am disappointed in Apple for it. And I find it using it eternally disappointing. I've only ever shared things to laugh at them. Yeah. I've only ever used things to share them and laugh at them because it, I am unhappy with all of the output and I'm especially unhappy that they centered

caricatures of people in your photos library. Instead of centering generic people, which are in there, which I totally even missed that it was in there. I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago that it had to be pointed out to me by a friend of me of the show, Griffin, that there is this appearance thing but like think about

that Apple wants you to make caricatures of your friends using its ML models like and they're not good yeah I just don't like it I don't like anything about it no when again Jen Moji is really good works, and I laugh with it, not at it, because I can make funny things with it. Yeah, it's funny. Yeah. Yeah. Have you seen the ad? There's a great Genmoji ad. I haven't seen it. No. It's great. There's a great ad. And it's just like a whole... You have this great technology. Why even bother with image playgrounds? Like, why? It's very strange to me. Because they're trying to look, look, I think in the end, in a couple of years, what we're going to look at Apple intelligence and say, Apple panicked, because they were behind,

they threw out everything that everybody else was doing, but we're behind on it. And then if they're lucky, what we'll say is, and then we realized the stuff that actually mattered and the stuff that didn't matter. And they kind of like faded away the stuff that didn't matter and focused on the stuff that mattered. But right now they don't have that. Yeah, I'm happy with that. Cause I thought Humane AI Pin would be fun. Great runner up.

But the thing is, was the Humane AI Pin, it wasn't a disappointment. We knew it was gonna be like that. No, it was a worse gadget though. It was a worse gadget. It shipped and it wasn't any good and all the reviews were brutal. And so I think it's literally worst gadget

is the humane AI pin. And then, do you have another runner up? I don't agree with the Vision Pro and I kind of, gang, I love you all so much, but like, we can't keep calling AI as a whole the most disappointing thing. We're gonna do this forever. Like, it's like at a certain point, like I think finding specific things to be mad about

or upset about I think is better than just like all of artificial intelligence. I think. Well, I was, I was trying to figure out a way to say like using like using AI for search, but even then it's too complex. I keep thinking about how I do Google searches now and they put up these AI things that are- I would be happy to say the Google AI summary. Google AI summary is the worst. I will say a few words about it.

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

where it does not belong. Where it actually serves to make the product worse. But I think search and chat GPT, like web search abilities in chat GPT has made chat GPT better. Because it's still wrong. You know it's going to be wrong, but like putting AI in Google made Google worse, right? Like where you can still say, and I get it, like how you were saying earlier, ChatGPT was getting things wrong, but ChatGPT was getting things wrong before. Like giving it

search functionality made it better, but it's still unreliable. I expect Google to be reliable and now it isn't. Right? Like the answer that Google gives me is an unreliable thing. I don't know if you saw this, but Jason Schreier at Bloomberg is a game reporter, he kind of went viral over the blue sky over the weekend because he said his, his children watched Encantoanto and loved it. And he wanted to find out if there was a sequel. So he typed in in Kanto too. And it gave a full plot breakdown and a release date of 2024, which all came

from a fandom Wiki where people kind of fan fiction movie development, like even down to the fact of saying that Gloria Estefan was actually the lead in this development. Like even down to the fact of saying that Gloria Estefan was actually the lead in this movie. Like they did like a whole thing, who wrote the music when they did it. And Google just used that. Now like that's not a good source to be training your AI on because it's not real in the first place.

And of course, once that breaks, they turn that off and they're like, oh no, no, that's not there anymore. But you can't, this is not how we can live our lives. And that, yes, I saw that example. It is a great example. How, and this is my overarching thought, cause I think this goes for a lot of the stuff that Apple has done too this year, which is,

maybe we need to be a little less generous about AI results because that Google result, like being so wrong, I feel like it's very easy to say, well, it's an AI result, what do you expect? Sometimes they're wrong. And in fact, I think what we should say is, Google released a defective product that misinforms its users,

even though they're in the business of information. And they've done it because they feel they have some sort of external business pressure to do it. But clearly they've released it before they can stand by its results because they've just decided to inflict it on the world, even though it's not very good, because they feel they need to. And everything I said also applies to Apple Intelligence.

Yeah. Yeah, because it's like, again, I can, you know, because I do like using chat GPT for some element of searching, but it's always like, get me to somewhere, get me me to somewhere and I like the way that it gets me to places. AI is great when it is assisting people who know it is assisting them yes and and providing information to as a tool as a part of a bigger nutritious breakfast. So we go to Google for answers. And the people who are using it don't know that it's an assistive tool and it's being presented to them as a fait accompli, as a this is your answer.

And that is, I think, the worst thing about AI right now is that it's being presented by companies as the answer when in fact it's best used as an assistant who is going to bring you things that you scrutinize. But that's a complex message. And a lot of people don't wanna scrutinize anything. They just want the answer. Okay, fair enough. But if you're giving them the wrong answer, you're not solving their problem.

You're making their problems worse. And that's where we are with a lot of AI stuff right now. So let's do that think I think there are specific Very good complaints, but I just think like all of AI I don't believe is like a yeah, just like a good like it Just an easy thing to say but we all have our different opinions on this and that's great that we have our different opinions Okay, so image playground is the winner winner

We'll put the humane AI pin as a runner up. Yeah. And how did you describe the Google? You had the right official work with it. Google AI summaries. Summaries. Yeah. Let's do that as a runner up. So we go to most life-changing hardware. The Upgradients voted 3% for the AirPods Pro 2's hearing aid features. Pretty strong.

4% for the Apple Vision Pro and 12% for the Apple Watch. The Apple Watch is always up the top of the list here, which makes sense because if you've just gotten an Apple Watch for the first time, your life just got changed, right? And it'll save your life. Yeah, yes. I'll throw the M4 MacBook Pro onto the pot because it changed my life because I'm working in a completely different way now with one computer instead of having two. I'm going to make a case for the Vision Pro. Okay. Because this is where it should have been, right? This is where this, you know, before this year began, if you think about what product, what category could the Vision Pro sit in?

Most life-changing hardware could have been it. So for me, the Vision Pro has been a huge part of my year, right? It's been a dominant thing that has occurred throughout the year. I traveled to America and had a great trip. I got to meet Tim Cook and Greg Joswiak. That was pretty fun. And I would say then the product has helped me stay better connected with friends and colleagues, right? Like we spoke about earlier. It's been something which has

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

I I think it is a great cutting edge piece of Apple hardware that just is basically an experimental piece of hardware now. And fine, that is what it is. I'm happy to have it in the mix. I'd like to put the MacBook Pro in the mix. And I think the AirPods Pro 2 with hearing aid is actually really resonates with me. Like that is kind of what this category is about. Yeah, I'd say these three, I think we could give it to the AirPods Pro 2.

Yeah, I agree. And then, I think we could give it to the AirPods Pro 2. Yeah, I agree. And then have the MacBook Pro and the Vision Pro in the mix. As the runners up. I agree. Because that is, again, it's not a thing that I need, but I did the hearing test and was really impressed by that. And I hear about how it could be used for people, and I think that is an amazing thing. And if I ever

get to that point, I feel confident and comfortable in knowing that there is already a solution that I have in my pocket that can help me. And it's just similar to how I feel about a lot of the health stuff that Apple does. It's like, I'm just very happy that the products that I already choose to wear and use have these features in them. And so this is just another great example of that. I agree. Favorite text story. Yeah. Upgradians.

5% of leaving Twitter for Mastodon or Blue Sky. 7% Apple ended DMA and 9% Apple Vision Pro. So I would just say copy and paste what I said about the Vision Pro into this one too, because that is my favorite text story of the year. All right. My favorite text story of the year is actually the surprise reveal of the M4.

Okay. In iPads, when we thought that the M4s would go in computers, you know, like Macintosh computers. And instead they did this M4 reveal with the, yeah, the thin iPad with the great screen, but the fact that they had the M4 in there, I think that that was, it's, I know Mark Gurman kind of broke it slightly early,

but it was still in doubt. It seemed so unlikely. Well, we were saying, we didn't think that it was going, even though that Mark was saying, it was like, but like it was still in doubt. Like it seems so unlikely. We didn't think that it was going, even though that Mark was saying it was like, is this one of the places where he's misunderstood, right? Cause it didn't seem likely that that was happening. So that was, I think that was my favorite story of the year.

Although yeah, for some, for some definitions of favorite, Apple adapting to the DMA this year was interesting. We talked about that when we talked about Delta. It's not just the DMA, but reacting to it by doing things like making emulators allowed and all the changes that they've had to make. At marketplaces and all of that stuff has been interesting to track and continues. Sure.

I don't know if I'd call it favorite though. I'm not sure I would either, to be honest. I think- What do you think? Well, I mean, for me, I think the Vision Pro would take it here for me. Yeah. This is the year where, I mean, the Vision Pro was just an announcement last year, and this year it was real, and we've got the good and the bad about that. So I'm fine with Vision Pro being the winner.

I would like to put the M4 reveal as a runner-up. And what should our other runner-up be? We could put the DMA one in as a runner-up because it has been a big story that's gone throughout the year. And I can understand some of the things that have come out of it have been either interesting or good, but also there's just like a lot of press releases from Institutions that are just upset at each other which can get which can drag you down a bit. But yeah

favorite is is an interesting word here because because the other one I was gonna nominate was the fall of Intel, but I don't consider that a favorite, right? I think it was a really interesting story. Yeah. I mean, that could go in the next category. Oh boy. I mean, tech screw up over the course of a decade, I guess.

Let's put in Apple adapting to the DMA as the runner up. All right. And so we come to our final category in the 11th annual Upgradees. Favorite text grew up. The Upgradians X at 5%, which is... Sure. I'm just going to say on that, like I know what you're saying, but also he got what he wanted. Like I don't, I don't think he screwed up. Like people left,

but I don't think he cares. Uh, I think he's going to lose a lot of money and I, I'm not sure he cares about that either because it's doing exactly what he wanted it to do, which is feed his ego. Like for me, the, the screw up, I mean, if you want to just say the name of it, yeah, I would agree with that. But like that all of the screw ups had already happened before this year. And this year we saw like he got something out of it. 13% crowd strike update failure that took out the entire world for at least a day. And then at 15% is the humane AI pin. Hey, it's the AI pin.

It's back again, it's back again. Okay, let me contribute to this because I also think the CrowdStrike situation is my favorite screw up of the year. I was on a plane when CrowdStrike happened. Wow. Landed and got all these texts about, oh no, are people gonna have trouble getting

where they need to go for the relay event in the UK? Oh my gosh, yeah, it's happening then. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I was thinking, yeah, no, I was flying to the UK. And I got to Heathrow and they're like, oh, will you even be able to get your continuing flight? Which we did, we had literally no impact on us.

But here's the thing, one of my favorite things in the world is how basic computer technology can completely fail us in ways we don't expect and in ways that we see in the real world. And I'll give you a concrete example, which was we were in, I think it was when we were in Denver, visiting my brother-in-law this summer, because they have a new baby. We're driving down the highway. I'm driving and Lauren's looking out the window and she laughs and says, check it out.

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

Crash of the billboard that's actually about your company brilliant. Do that. Okay, do that But this wasn't this was literally like I can't read this external device press f1 I was like, oh man, and then I was just in an airport five flights in 10 days I don't don't know which airport. And when we were walking, there was a big, I think it was an ad terminal and it was all, it was the DOS startup. I love it when just a cheap crappy PC thing happens and you see it in the world where you shouldn't. I don't love it necessarily when a dumb software update

breaks the entire like world in a way that causes havoc among especially travelers and that requires IT people to individually manually update their PCs to get them to work right. Plus just the fact that it's a problem with Windows PCs. I mean, okay, am I, as a Mac, a long time Mac user, do I still have enough feeling in my heart that I can delight at the utter failure of a Windows PC

that's being used in a vital situation because somebody was asleep at the switch when they pulled the software update out there and now nothing can be done. I'm not too small or I'm not too big for that. I am that small. It actually kind of delights me. It's why those DOS prompts delight me when I see them. It's the same thing.

It's like, oh, your PC broke. Oh, that's too bad. So yeah, I love the CrowdStrike story. That is 100 percent my favorite tech screw up of the year. Yeah. It was pretty monumental as a thing. Just like you said, one of those things like, Oh, this is what Y2K would have been like. Like, yeah, this is what people will sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah. I saw there was a story over the weekend that NPR did that made a lot of people on Mastodon very angry for good reasons, which was like, you know, basically, it's just overheated or reheated content for2K. Oh, well that amounted to nothing.

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

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

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

actually do the things that they want anyway, and that I do kind of really enjoy. But what I will say is one thing that seems to have happened in the last few weeks that's very interesting is Apple has once again used the supposedly neutral notarization system for iOS in the EU to issue a blanket rejection of an app submission, which is not supposed to happen. They talked about it a lot on ATP a couple of weeks ago. It's the idea that they say on, I think it's a mini-VMac, a Mac emulator, on trademark grounds because they own the trademark, they are going to refuse to notarize the app. And I think this is one of those things that first off, like legally, I don't think they

can do it. I think that the European Commission is going to say, you can't use it this way, but it makes me so angry that they're using their neutral approval system that's supposed to be neutral, all they have to do is sue the mini-BMAC developer and say you're using our trademarks incorrectly. They send an immediate cease and desist. A cease and desist.

That's the way you do this. But the fact that they pulled that lever that should never be pulled, that turns the entire supposedly innocent, unbiased for user safety notarization system and turns it into a de facto approval system. It's the worst. And I would be more angry about it if I didn't think that Apple is going to get smacked down for it, that this is going to be one of those cases where somebody said, let's just use this mechanism to disapprove of this app.

And that hopefully somebody at the European Commission is going to go, no, that is not what that mechanism is for. Use another mechanism and stop it. Because really, the jig is up. If Apple can use notarization to ban apps in the EU and elsewhere, then what are we even doing here? We're back to square one again. Like it's totally counter to the point of it

where notarization is the app store approval process and that's not allowed. So anyway, I'm gonna file that under Apple's reaction to the DMA here because I think it's an example of Apple behaving incredibly stupidly and badly when there were better and ruining a thing that they built because they want they didn't want to do the more logical recourse and I'm baffled by it but there it is. Which is my that this is like emblematic of why this is my kind of like favorite text

grew up at the end. Yeah. Like it is what I consider to be the biggest because it is not just one story. It has been an entire year's worth of things that they have over and over and over again made it worse and like continue to make it worse and something's going to happen. I don't know what it is. Yeah. Like I have no idea. I have no idea anymore. Either they, you know, get fined into oblivion and we'll go to court and I don't know what will happen there. Or it's Apple is basically going to strong arm the EU enough that this all falls apart.

Like at this point, like I don't know what the result is, but it's not going to be pretty. No, I, uh, I, I actually, I'm, I'm going to go with you. I think that should be our winner because we are specifically saying that Apple's reaction to what's happening in Europe is a screw up. They're not doing it right. They're not doing it well. And I know there's an argument of like, there's a legal argument.

I'm like, well, yeah, but if there's a legal issue, they need to fight it out, right? And I get that, but this goes way beyond that. Some of this behavior goes way beyond that. And we'll put the AI pin as number three. And CrowdStrike, of course. CrowdStrike is a chip in. Yeah.

By a, loses by a hair. So that's it. That is the 11th annual Upgradees. We hope that you have enjoyed this episode. Thank you so much for listening to us for yet another year. Happy new year to you all all as we get ready to go into 2025. Very excited about what the year will bring for personal reasons and professional reasons. Yes, sure. Happy New Year to all Upgradians. Thank you so much for listening. If you would like to

send us in any questions or follow up to talk about the next week's show, please go to upgradefeedback.com and you can do that. You can check out Jason at sixcolors.com, the incomparable.com and here on Relay, where you hear me too. And you can find my work at cortexbrand.com. You can follow us online. We are on Macedon threads and blues guy. And you can find video clips of this show on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. We are at upgrade relay.

Thank you to our members who support us at Upgrade Plus. This week, we're gonna talk about my Mac Mini, and I think maybe we'll talk about the holidays a little bit. You can go to getupgradeplus.com and sign up. Thank you to FitBod, ShareShot, and Data Citizens Dialogues for their support of this week's episode. But most of all, thank you for listening.

Until next time, say goodbye, Snow. Goodbye Mike Hurley.