00:00:11 ◼ ► From Relay FM, this is upgrade 332 and welcome to the most prestigious night of the year.
00:00:18 ◼ ► The biggest event on the calendar. It is the Upgradies Awards. This is the seventh annual
00:00:23 ◼ ► Upgradies for the year of 2020. This episode is brought to you by DoorDash, Pingdom, SaneBox,
00:00:31 ◼ ► and Hover. I am one of your hosts. I am Myke Hurley and I am joined by my co-hosts for the awards this
00:00:36 ◼ ► evening, Mr. Jason Snell. Hello, Jason Snell. Hello, Myke Hurley. How are you? I am fine and
00:00:41 ◼ ► dandy, my friend. Fine and dandy indeed. You know how much I look forward to this event. I have been
00:00:48 ◼ ► very excited and working away over the last week or so to get everything together for today.
00:00:54 ◼ ► And I'm very excited to start our award category shortly. But we do have some things that we,
00:01:00 ◼ ► you know, we have the intro of the awards, you know, to kind of get everyone settled in.
00:01:04 ◼ ► People are still taking their seats, getting their drinks. Warming up. We're warming up.
00:01:09 ◼ ► So I have a couple of Snell Talk questions for you today, actually, because I had one that I
00:01:14 ◼ ► thought of and then I also found one that was award related. So I thought, if we don't ask you now,
00:01:20 ◼ ► I might not ask you for a year. So my question to you, Jason, is if you could give an honorary
00:01:26 ◼ ► upgradey award to a winner in a category that we do not already have for this year, what would it be
00:01:32 ◼ ► and who would it go to? I like that you're asking this at the beginning because that means that I
00:01:37 ◼ ► really can't give it to anything even remotely close to what we cover. Yeah. Because we don't
00:01:41 ◼ ► know, as we'll get to in a minute, we don't know who the winners will be, unlike other award shows.
00:01:46 ◼ ► This just happens as we go. I am going to give an award for the best helpers of 2020 to public health
00:01:56 ◼ ► professionals, frontline healthcare workers, and vaccine scientists for all that they did in 2020.
00:02:02 ◼ ► Because, you know, 2020. Yeah. The scientific community, the medical community this year,
00:02:15 ◼ ► You know, I would expect that we will probably not see anything again on this kind of scale.
00:02:29 ◼ ► Ah, good. And, you know, like, you're completely right. Like the health professionals and the
00:02:34 ◼ ► healthcare workers, the way that they step up like that. And I have kind of been astounded by what I
00:02:41 ◼ ► have learned about kind of medical science this year in the sense of like the entire world focuses
00:02:50 ◼ ► on a problem at the same time with unlimited resource. We can fix it. Yep. And I think that,
00:02:56 ◼ ► you know, that what we've seen with vaccination technology and research this year is kind of
00:03:02 ◼ ► astounding. And I hope that there's some stuff that's learned from this whole process that could
00:03:08 ◼ ► be applied to other things. I completely, you've picked the very best honorary upgrade award and
00:03:15 ◼ ► winner for 2020, I think. Yeah, I think so. And Stitch asked, when and in what category do you
00:03:23 ◼ ► think that Apple TV+ would win its first big award like an Oscar or an Emmy? Take that, Golden Globes.
00:03:32 ◼ ► Take that. Yeah, they won. They did win an Emmy, right? But was it a supporting actor Emmy?
00:03:38 ◼ ► Was what? No, that was the, wasn't that the Golden Globe or was that the Emmy? I think that was an
00:03:42 ◼ ► Emmy, but let's assume as a bigger award. What do you think Apple's biggest award could be?
00:03:49 ◼ ► Put up one for supporting actor Emmy. So Emmy already, there's your answer. My answer for both
00:03:56 ◼ ► of these generally is it's probably some less visible category. I was going to actually say
00:04:01 ◼ ► documentary might be a good example of that. If we're talking about the Oscars, especially,
00:04:06 ◼ ► I think it'll be something that is a, it's a doc or a short or something like that, that's in a
00:04:13 ◼ ► smaller category that we've seen Netflix win those awards before. Like maybe it comes out of Apple's
00:04:21 ◼ ► collaboration with Oprah or, you know, I don't know what it's going to be, but that would be my gut
00:04:27 ◼ ► feeling is that it's going to be something like that. The Oscars are going to be harder, right?
00:04:30 ◼ ► Because they're going to want to, you know, it's that whole premiering things in theaters.
00:04:34 ◼ ► Presumably that will be a rule of, again, at some point. And the Emmys, they've got one, but,
00:04:38 ◼ ► you know, I would also say, you know, documentary visual effects are always a place where they've
00:04:45 ◼ ► got some of these visual effects series, like For All Mankind, where they might actually have
00:04:49 ◼ ► a chance in a category like that. And while we're talking about the Emmys and like major awards,
00:04:55 ◼ ► I would, I mean, I don't know what's going to happen, obviously, but Jason Sudeikis would get
00:05:00 ◼ ► my vote for best actor in a comedy for Ted Lasso. So I wonder if they will, if there will be some
00:05:08 ◼ ► Emmy recognition for Ted Lasso on the way. I wonder if they could, would a show like Ted
00:05:13 ◼ ► Lasso pick up an actual like best comedy, right? Cause that's like the major stuff, isn't it?
00:05:19 ◼ ► Yeah, it's the big, yeah, the big awards is, I think that's a separate question, but it's like,
00:05:33 ◼ ► an acting award in a category, but I would, yeah, I would, I think Apple is going to get nominated
00:05:40 ◼ ► in some of these categories. Their slate is good and getting better and it'll be fascinating to see
00:05:45 ◼ ► what they are, but like Ted Lasso is the one that I'm looking at now. Cause that seems so obvious to
00:05:49 ◼ ► me, which of course means that they'll probably not even get nominated because that happens all
00:05:53 ◼ ► the time with the Emmy awards. There's nothing more Emmy awards like outrage about not being
00:05:58 ◼ ► nominated or Oscars, quite frankly. If you would like to send in a question to help us open an
00:06:12 ◼ ► let's talk a little bit about the upgrade ease. Why do we, why do we have this award show? Why,
00:06:17 ◼ ► why do we have it? Why have we been doing this thing for so many years? You wanted to do it.
00:06:23 ◼ ► When we started the podcast, which we started in September, we got to the end of the year and you
00:06:27 ◼ ► said, Jason, let's do a best of the year award show and we'll call it the upgrade ease and we'll
00:06:34 ◼ ► make it the first annual. And I said, no, you can't call it that. You have to wait a year before it to
00:06:38 ◼ ► show that it's annual and you agreed, which is, was big of you. And, uh, and so yeah, you really
00:06:44 ◼ ► wanted to do it, but this is a thing that I always did at a Mac user and Mac world. We had the Eddie
00:06:51 ◼ ► awards. And so we always had an annual product cycle where we wrote down winners and nominees
00:06:58 ◼ ► and had debates in, you know, in various conference rooms about like, what should be the winner in
00:07:04 ◼ ► various categories. And I always thought that was a fun process. It was also a lot of work and I got
00:07:10 ◼ ► really tired of it at the end and I made other people do it instead of me. I actually ran it for
00:07:15 ◼ ► a little while. Um, but I think there's something to that. And, and what's ended up happening here
00:07:21 ◼ ► is that we've taken our sort of end of the year review show and a way to talk about some of our
00:07:26 ◼ ► favorite stuff from the year and wrapped it in this kind of award structure that replicates a
00:07:32 ◼ ► little bit of that, that kind of back room, the conference room experience of discussing
00:07:40 ◼ ► our options out in public, which is obviously not something we ever did at Mac world or Mac user for
00:07:46 ◼ ► for the Eddie awards. That was all very secret. And then there was just a ceremony for a long time.
00:07:50 ◼ ► There was this actual like tuxedo formal ceremony where actual statues were handed out. But here on
00:07:59 ◼ ► upgrade, you get the, you get to hear the back, the back room conversations about what we should
00:08:03 ◼ ► give the awards. And I think that's part of the fun of it. Yeah. So we have been, uh, and then
00:08:08 ◼ ► over the last few years as well, one of the changes that we made was to, uh, take nominations
00:08:13 ◼ ► from the upgrade. So if you listen to the show, you've been listening to show recently, you've
00:08:17 ◼ ► known over the last month or so we have been taking nominations from you. Uh, we had, I think
00:08:24 ◼ ► it was over 1500, 1600 people cast their nomination. So thank you very much. If you took part. And I
00:08:30 ◼ ► really liked that because we get a lot of feedback and there will typically be applications and things
00:08:37 ◼ ► whether it's stories or media that gets recommended that I otherwise wouldn't have considered. And
00:08:42 ◼ ► that's really great. So we will do as we do every year. I will read out the, for every category,
00:08:48 ◼ ► the top three in the upgrade Ian's voting. And then we will also talk about our own personal
00:08:55 ◼ ► nominations for the categories as well. We use our nominations and the upgrade Ian's nominations
00:09:02 ◼ ► to, for the two of us to decide on who we think is worthy of the win in each category. So it's,
00:09:10 ◼ ► it's really good to have that sometimes the, the upgrade is, can be the casting vote. Honestly,
00:09:15 ◼ ► sometimes the upgrade Ian's have been the entire vote and I expect that there'll be some of that
00:09:19 ◼ ► as we go on throughout the evening. So if you want to see who has won every single award in
00:09:26 ◼ ► upgraded history, there is a website which is built for us by wonderful friend of the show and
00:09:31 ◼ ► moderator of the relay FM members, discord, Zach Knox and Zach, me and Zach work together on this.
00:09:36 ◼ ► And Zach does all the work. Zach just asked me some questions frankly. Um, and I'm very thankful
00:09:41 ◼ ► for that. So that's upgrade ease.com. Uh, I recommend not going there right now because
00:09:46 ◼ ► probably by the time you're listening to this, all of the 2020 winners will be there. So kind of
00:09:51 ◼ ► keep wait, wait until you finish the show, then go look at the 2020 website. It's really great
00:09:57 ◼ ► because we put in every category of every year and you can see every single winner, which is fantastic.
00:10:02 ◼ ► And one of the, one of the quirks of the upgrade ease is our audience being the wonderful, uh,
00:10:09 ◼ ► nerds that they are, have some things that they love so much that they will vote for them
00:10:13 ◼ ► constantly forever. So we, uh, introduced the lifetime achievement award a couple of years ago.
00:10:20 ◼ ► And the way that this works is if any winner continues to win a category, the same category,
00:10:27 ◼ ► uh, three times. So if you win best iOS app three years, it doesn't have to be in a row,
00:10:33 ◼ ► but just in total, you get the lifetime achievement award for that category and you are no longer able
00:10:39 ◼ ► to win it. So this stopped from certain apps and especially podcasts from winning the same award
00:10:46 ◼ ► every year. Um, as it stands right now, we have three lifetime achievement award winners. And part
00:10:52 ◼ ► of being lifetime achievement award winner is you get the recognition every single year in the
00:11:03 ◼ ► which is overcast favorite tech podcast, which is the accidental tech podcast and favorite non tech
00:11:09 ◼ ► podcast, which is the flop house. So they are a current, uh, lifetime achievement award winners
00:11:15 ◼ ► in their respective categories. I like how you blamed the listeners for this when we pick the
00:11:21 ◼ ► winners. So it's really on us more than the listeners that we get very excited about things.
00:11:26 ◼ ► That's a good point. Well, what I didn't say is that we are also the same kind of nerd,
00:11:32 ◼ ► right? Who would just continue to, you got to make that connection there. Yeah. That's,
00:11:35 ◼ ► that's a very good point. We're all the same. Uh, so yeah, we, you know, nailed it. There are
00:11:41 ◼ ► certain podcasts, for example, that we love or apps that we love and we would just keep,
00:11:56 ◼ ► All right, before we get into our very first category, let me take our first break of the
00:12:03 ◼ ► evening and thank Pingdom for their support of this show and for helping us put on the upgrade
00:12:08 ◼ ► ease this year. Today's internet users expect a fast web experience, no matter how good your
00:12:15 ◼ ► content or how effective your marketing, they're going to bounce if your website is loading too
00:12:19 ◼ ► slowly. With real user monitoring from Pingdom, you can discover how website performance issues
00:12:25 ◼ ► affect your visitors experiences. So you can take action before your business is impacted.
00:12:29 ◼ ► How your visitors experience your website differs depending on the browser, the device,
00:12:33 ◼ ► the platform that they're using, and you want to identify how visitors are experiencing your
00:12:39 ◼ ► website. So you can make informed optimizations and deliver a great performance to those
00:12:49 ◼ ► scalability, meaning that you can monitor millions of page views without compromising the fidelity
00:12:54 ◼ ► of your historical data or breaking the bank in the process. Get live visitor insights with
00:13:05 ◼ ► free trial with no credit card required. Then when you sign up, use the code upgrade at checkout to
00:13:10 ◼ ► get an awesome 30% off your first invoice. Our thanks to Pingdom from SolarWinds for their
00:13:15 ◼ ► support of this show and Relay FM. So we move into the first category of the evening for best
00:13:32 ◼ ► They can pick up the best overall iOS app. We have from the Upgradients, Jason, at 4.2%
00:13:45 ◼ ► and I don't believe has ever actually won one of the Upgradies. I don't think neither has it
00:13:53 ◼ ► actually been a runner-up in the past, but from my memory, I know that it's always there. It's always
00:13:59 ◼ ► voted pretty highly from the Upgradients. It breaks in to their votes. At 7.1% of the vote,
00:14:05 ◼ ► we have Carrot Weather from Brian Mueller. Carrot Weather is a previous Upgrady award winner from
00:14:13 ◼ ► 2017. So could be picking up a second win here tonight. Good luck, Brian Carrot. Okay, 14.6%
00:14:23 ◼ ► for Apollo, for Reddit, from Christian Selig. Another application that has been a two-time
00:14:32 ◼ ► runner-up, weirdly, in the newcomer iOS app. It's won that twice. I'm not sure exactly how that's
00:14:40 ◼ ► happened, Jason, but it has happened. I think the app was re-released at one point. Sometimes there
00:14:47 ◼ ► are irregularities in the voting process, but Apollo is there with 14.6% of the vote from
00:14:54 ◼ ► Christian Selig. This is for the best overall iOS app. Jason, what nominations are you bringing to
00:14:59 ◼ ► the table today? I have four and I'm reminded one of the great things about the Lifetime Achievement
00:15:06 ◼ ► Award winners is it reminds me that we have these categories where you don't have to have done
00:15:11 ◼ ► anything. You just need to continue to exist and be great and you can be nominated and possibly win.
00:15:16 ◼ ► And I'll know when it's time to stop when you say, "Jason, that means this product is now a
00:15:23 ◼ ► Lifetime Achievement winner," and then I have to stop. But until then, I can just keep mentioning
00:15:32 ◼ ► Fairite Recording Studio from Wuji Juice again, which is probably my favorite iOS app. The audio
00:15:41 ◼ ► editor, I use it for podcasts. I edit the incomparable on Fairite using an Apple Pencil.
00:15:46 ◼ ► I love it. It's great. I can't wait for it to be on the Mac. That'll be nice too. But the experience
00:15:54 ◼ ► of sitting with my iPad and a pencil and editing a podcast, can't be beat. It's my favorite podcast
00:16:07 ◼ ► - Fairite was a runner-up in 2018. - It's because I keep mentioning it and it keeps not winning,
00:16:13 ◼ ► but I'm just going to mention it again. It's great. It's amazing. I want to mention drafts.
00:16:18 ◼ ► Now, I am not... So I've had an annual subscription to drafts for a little more than a year.
00:16:27 ◼ ► They did a special involving Stephen Hackett's St. Jude campaign, and I bought it then. And I thought,
00:16:35 ◼ ► "Well, I'll try it out for a year and it's a discount and all of that." And then I just
00:16:39 ◼ ► resubscribed for another year. I'm not one of these... I think there are a lot of people who
00:16:44 ◼ ► are sort of like in the drafts life cycle, their lifestyle, they're like super into it. And it's
00:16:49 ◼ ► funny how sometimes the more fervent a fan base an app has, and this is true for other things too,
00:16:58 ◼ ► obviously, the less accessible it seems because all the talk about it ends up being about why it's
00:17:05 ◼ ► great to do these incredible things and you put your whole life into it and it changes the way
00:17:15 ◼ ► it doesn't actually say... The fact that there are rabid fans of something doesn't actually say
00:17:22 ◼ ► if that app is accessible or not. It says a lot about its depth and complexity and how interesting
00:17:28 ◼ ► it might be. But the app could be pretty accessible or not accessible at all. And you wouldn't know.
00:17:35 ◼ ► And so I've spent the last year using drafts for some things and I like it. I've written a bunch
00:17:42 ◼ ► of articles in it. I use OneWriter mostly when I'm on the iPad writing, but OneWriter has some bugs
00:17:53 ◼ ► And drafts is rock solid. I was able to very slightly modify all of my automation stuff in
00:17:59 ◼ ► shortcuts to work with drafts. And the big problem I have with drafts is that it won't let me sort
00:18:05 ◼ ► of sync out to a text file on Dropbox. You can export, but it's not quite the same as a sync
00:18:12 ◼ ► because I do move from Mac to iPad and I wanna be able to write my articles or edit my articles
00:18:18 ◼ ► in either place. - So you mean like if you're writing an article in drafts, you would maybe
00:18:23 ◼ ► wanna be open it in BB edit, but you would need to be a file in Dropbox. - Exactly right. I have
00:18:28 ◼ ► drafts on the Mac. I'm not interested in writing in drafts on the Mac. Sorry, I'm not. I'm gonna
00:18:33 ◼ ► write there in BB edit. I actually have changed my workflow in drafts. I'm now using a shortcut that
00:18:41 ◼ ► will save a copy of the current draft to the Dropbox so I can get there. And I also do have
00:18:47 ◼ ► drafts on my Mac and I can open it and then take it out and put it in BB edit where I want it to be.
00:18:51 ◼ ► So I've got some work arounds for that. I wish there was a way to say, just sync this with a
00:18:57 ◼ ► file provider so I can go back and forth. And I get why philosophically that's not something
00:19:03 ◼ ► that drafts wants to do, but as an iOS app on its own, the great thing about it having that depth
00:19:14 ◼ ► I can do it. Like there's a way to do it. That amazes me, but I'm not using the depths of it
00:19:22 ◼ ► like some people are, but I've been very impressed that whenever I need to try and reach for a tool
00:19:32 ◼ ► shortcuts and like it's got all of the nice stuff. So I've spent a year with drafts and
00:19:35 ◼ ► I'm very impressed with it. So I wanted to mention it. Yeah, I will say the same thing about drafts
00:19:40 ◼ ► in the sense that I don't use it very much, but I use it for a few things and it fills some holes
00:19:45 ◼ ► for me with automation that otherwise would be really tricky. And the way that I've been able
00:19:50 ◼ ► to get those to work is by purely having the idea and searching for it in the drafts action
00:19:55 ◼ ► directory and someone's already done it. This is definitely one of those applications where it's
00:20:00 ◼ ► like if you can think of it, it's been done already. Like if it's possible somebody's done it
00:20:05 ◼ ► and you can install one of those actions and get it to work for you. So drafts for me is more of
00:20:12 ◼ ► a bridge between things, but a very useful one. Yeah. And for me, I'm also not using it as the way
00:20:21 ◼ ► that it's sort of done on the label, but I enjoy it. It's very good. I've been very impressed with
00:20:26 ◼ ► it. My entire story of writing on iOS is essentially trying to find something that will replicate what
00:20:31 ◼ ► I want from a writing app that I get from BB edit. And there's nothing that does that. There's
00:20:38 ◼ ► nothing that does it exactly the way that I want to do it. And I obviously don't use 90% of BB
00:20:43 ◼ ► edits features either because it's primarily a development tool and I use it as a writing tool.
00:20:55 ◼ ► A lot of them have scripting involved, which is great. And that's why I use OneWriter and
00:21:00 ◼ ► that's why I've used drafts. The problem is the downside of having an app that really supports
00:21:06 ◼ ► user automation is that sometimes, I'm not saying this always happens, but sometimes the developer
00:21:11 ◼ ► says, "I don't need to build features for my app because you can build them yourself or get one
00:21:17 ◼ ► from a friend in a script." It's like, "Well, no, search and replace should not be a user script.
00:21:25 ◼ ► It should be a feature of the app and I can go from there." And that's the problem I see with
00:21:29 ◼ ► a lot of these iOS apps that don't have a lot of functionality. And some of the ones that do
00:21:34 ◼ ► don't do it just don't work the way I want. Ulysses is a good example where Ulysses is a
00:21:39 ◼ ► really great app, but the way that it wants to hide the code from you, especially like hyperlinks,
00:21:47 ◼ ► I don't work like that. I don't want my hyperlink text to turn into a block that you have to click
00:21:54 ◼ ► on to open to edit as an item. I want it to just be text and Ulysses doesn't want to do that. So
00:21:59 ◼ ► I get why, but it doesn't work for me. So my adventure of attempting to find an iOS writing
00:22:06 ◼ ► app continues, but drafts has become... I'd say I'm writing in drafts maybe half the time and in
00:22:13 ◼ ► one writer half the time. I sort of go back and forth. I get frustrated with one writer,
00:22:16 ◼ ► I go to drafts, but it's given me time with drafts to be impressed about how good it is.
00:22:23 ◼ ► - Okay. - I have two more I want to mention. One is Libby. A lot of people don't know about this,
00:22:30 ◼ ► especially if you're in the US though. Libby is an iPhone app, essentially. I don't even know if you
00:22:35 ◼ ► can use it on the iPad. I don't. I only use it on the iPhone, but it is a... Oh no, it is on the
00:22:40 ◼ ► iPad. I will use it occasionally there. It ties into your local library. It's part of the OverDrive
00:22:47 ◼ ► if your library has that and it lets you... It's great because this is an app that lets you check
00:22:53 ◼ ► out audio books from your local library and they download into the app and you use it to play
00:22:59 ◼ ► the audio books. So if your library has audio books available, you may not even know this,
00:23:04 ◼ ► you can use this app. It's super easy to use. This stuff used to be very complicated and now it's very
00:23:09 ◼ ► easy. So you can check out an audio book and then listen to it and then check it back in
00:23:14 ◼ ► without going to the library and it's just on your phone, which is presumably where you want to play
00:23:18 ◼ ► an audio book from. I also use it. It's the best interface that I've found to find what books are
00:23:24 ◼ ► available to borrow to use on my Kindle from the library. And you use the Libby app to find those
00:23:32 ◼ ► books and to put them in your wishlist or to check them out and send them to your Kindle. And I do
00:23:37 ◼ ► that all the time too. So I'm using my local libraries features. Some disclaimer, my wife
00:23:44 ◼ ► works at my local library and she's the one who turned me on to this thing, but it's great. It's
00:23:48 ◼ ► a really nice app. And for people to use library services, especially this year when going into
00:23:55 ◼ ► libraries is probably not happening. There's so many digital services that are available and this
00:24:01 ◼ ► is a great app. It legitimately, it's so convenient to have it on your phone. So Libby, there it is.
00:24:10 ◼ ► And finally, I want to mention Scriptable, which I spent a lot of time using this year.
00:24:30 ◼ ► widgets. So you can write your own widget to do whatever and put it on your home screen. And I
00:24:37 ◼ ► did that a couple of times. I wrote a weather, I wrote a widget for air quality using air sensors,
00:24:43 ◼ ► local purple air air quality sensors during the wildfires here and made that into my first GitHub
00:24:49 ◼ ► project. And a bunch of people are using a version of that now, which is awesome. And it sits on my
00:24:54 ◼ ► home screen and it tells me what my air quality is. And then I also wrote one just for me that uses
00:25:00 ◼ ► all the data from my weather station. On my Mac, I've got it in a menu bar, but on my iPhone and
00:25:05 ◼ ► iPad, it's in a little widget that's powered by Scriptable. So that's pretty incredible to be able
00:25:12 ◼ ► to build something that is living on my home screen and is updating regularly. And I made it
00:25:18 ◼ ► myself for me. That's pretty incredible and Scriptable lets you do that. So you mentioned
00:25:25 ◼ ► widgets. My three nominations for best overall iOS app all have fantastic widgets. And it's how
00:25:32 ◼ ► I actually mainly interact with these applications now, either by looking at the widgets on my iPhone
00:25:37 ◼ ► or my iPad or tapping the widget to open the application. So Timery, honestly, I think Timery
00:25:44 ◼ ► is one of the best iOS apps of all time because it is so well made for its purpose. It has absolutely
00:25:52 ◼ ► everything that you need if you want to time track and it does nothing more, nothing less.
00:25:58 ◼ ► And it is perfectly built by someone who, Joe Hirabar, who clearly understands how to do this
00:26:08 ◼ ► kind of work. You know, like it's very rare that I used an application where I feel like the maker
00:26:13 ◼ ► of that application works exactly like me. And Timery is an example, I think, of just a
00:26:21 ◼ ► very well executed simple application that has powerful features in it if you want to dig through
00:26:28 ◼ ► it. Super good. The widgets are fantastic. Joe has done just a superb job with charts and stuff.
00:26:34 ◼ ► So allowing you to see statistics of your time tracking and you can create as many widgets as
00:26:39 ◼ ► you want. You can arbitrarily change the colors of them to whatever you want. You can label them.
00:26:44 ◼ ► You can turn certain projects on and off on the widgets. So you're just, you know, so like,
00:26:49 ◼ ► for example, now I have a widget that shows me all of my time track today, one that shows me all of
00:26:55 ◼ ► my time track this week and one that shows me all of my time track this week just for podcast
00:27:00 ◼ ► recording and editing. I like to have that data. It just lives in my today view. I can scroll down
00:27:10 ◼ ► The other one, again, actually for me, all three of these, they're like my personal Hall of Fame
00:27:16 ◼ ► of applications. Carrot Weather is the next one. This is the only nomination from me or you that
00:27:23 ◼ ► matches with the Upgradients. Carrot Weather is just superb. It's such a great application.
00:27:31 ◼ ► It is one of those applications that now I never open because the widgets are just perfect.
00:27:38 ◼ ► Like Brian has done something with the widgets and Carrot Weather that it's so incredible where the
00:27:43 ◼ ► widget type that I use, people always ask me which one it was. So I'm going to just double check the
00:27:49 ◼ ► name of it because I don't want to get it wrong. So like there's a bunch of different types of
00:27:52 ◼ ► widgets that you can use with Carrot. And the one that I use is called the forecast widget.
00:27:58 ◼ ► And it changes throughout the day between a bunch of other types of widgets that the app can give
00:28:04 ◼ ► you. So like in the morning, I will get what the weather is for the day. And then later on,
00:28:10 ◼ ► I will get the like in the day, I'll get the weather for the next few days because towards
00:28:15 ◼ ► the end of the day, you just want the weather for the week. And if it's raining, the application,
00:28:19 ◼ ► the widget updates to show me how long it's going to rain for. It is an absolutely superb
00:28:25 ◼ ► implementation of this feature. And it's just, I'd never need to open Carrot Weather anymore
00:28:32 ◼ ► because the widget is exactly what I need all the time. Fantastic. And then talking about fantastic,
00:28:38 ◼ ► Fantastical is my next choice. Fantastical 3 gave me the two things that I really desperately
00:28:49 ◼ ► wanted from this application. I mean, I've used Fantastical since the original. I wanted to have
00:28:54 ◼ ► an iPad version that looked like the Mac version. And I wanted the calendar sets from the Mac
00:28:59 ◼ ► version on iOS. They added these, they refreshed the design, they added some new features in.
00:29:08 ◼ ► Like they have the ability for you now to like create an event and like with a bunch of options
00:29:14 ◼ ► and send it to people and they can choose what event they want and it blocks it all out in your
00:29:17 ◼ ► calendar. It's clever stuff, but it's not a feature that I need. And then the overall design polish
00:29:25 ◼ ► and then the widgets, just superb. Like I have a widget now where I've got a calendar and my
00:29:31 ◼ ► next upcoming events. It has a little heat map on it, which I wasn't sure about at first, but I've
00:29:35 ◼ ► come to really like the heat map on the widget, which shows where my busy and empty times are.
00:29:41 ◼ ► So yeah, absolutely superb update that the app saw this year. So Fantastical is my third and final
00:29:48 ◼ ► nomination for this category, which I think this category is going to be tricky now, Jason. So...
00:29:54 ◼ ► Do you, after hearing, so I would say after hearing your nominations, I definitely could
00:30:02 ◼ ► imagine Drafts as the winner here, personally. I don't know if you feel any different from
00:30:16 ◼ ► Okay. So Ferrite, I really appreciate Ferrite and what it's doing, but I do not use it.
00:30:22 ◼ ► Right. Um, I imagine a world where I would, but I don't want to take the time to learn a new
00:30:30 ◼ ► application until I get the benefit of having it everywhere. So if and when Ferrite makes its way
00:30:36 ◼ ► to the Mac, I am then more, I am then going to choose to learn Ferrite where I'm on the Mac
00:30:43 ◼ ► primarily, and then use the iPad as a separate thing. For me personally, I couldn't edit a
00:30:48 ◼ ► podcast on my iPad with the precision that I want the way that you do. Cause I just don't think
00:30:54 ◼ ► ergonomically that would be good for me. Right now. I know for you it works and for anybody
00:31:04 ◼ ► All right. But I love Ferrite. I love Ferrite. It is a superb application. Some of the, the
00:31:18 ◼ ► Um, well the, the listeners, the Upgradients did vote second for Carrot Weather and you mentioned
00:31:26 ◼ ► Carrot Weather. I also use Carrot Weather and I like it a lot, although I don't like it as much
00:31:31 ◼ ► as you and I don't like the widgets as much as you. In fact, I'm using Weatherline just for the
00:31:36 ◼ ► widgets cause I think they're better than Carrot Weather's widgets. Um, just the way that the data
00:31:42 ◼ ► is presented, I think is better in Weatherline cause it's a more readable and shows me the ups
00:31:47 ◼ ► and downs of the high temperature, which is exactly what I want. Interesting. Um, and Carrots
00:31:58 ◼ ► Um, I do have that, but, uh, so I, yeah, you're right. This is a difficult one. I think
00:32:04 ◼ ► Fantastic Cal is an interesting point. I don't love Fantastic Cal on iOS as much as I do on the Mac.
00:32:09 ◼ ► Honestly, I, I, I'm much more frustrated by how it works on iOS. Um, I don't think it's as good
00:32:14 ◼ ► as the Mac version. Um, so. I think it's fair we can pause Fantastic Cal, right? Because I love it
00:32:23 ◼ ► everywhere. You love it on the Mac. Maybe we'll talk about it later. So we can knock Fantastic Cal
00:32:28 ◼ ► out. I'm going to understand that Timery is not going to win this, right? So like, I know that,
00:32:34 ◼ ► but it's, it's important to me, but it is an application that you need to use to understand it.
00:32:45 ◼ ► newcomer iOS app last year. Oh, so, so this is interesting. So an app that I don't use,
00:32:51 ◼ ► I, I checked off the box. So there's a precedent for that. I let the app that you love so much.
00:32:58 ◼ ► There's a lot of precedent where me and you bargain for things that we really care about.
00:33:03 ◼ ► That isn't, this is not new. It's true. Like, look, what I'm saying is, so I think the winner
00:33:09 ◼ ► of this category needs to come from me and you because I don't use Apollo. I don't know if you
00:33:15 ◼ ► use Apollo. I don't know. I have it. I have used it. I find it too fiddly. My problem is more with
00:33:22 ◼ ► Reddit than Apollo. Apollo makes Reddit more usable for me, but my problem is Reddit. And if I,
00:33:34 ◼ ► I am aware of the amount of effort that has been put into an application over the last couple of
00:33:41 ◼ ► years. And I think that it deserves the recognition for that. All right. Well, my favorite, my, my
00:33:48 ◼ ► favorite is, is fair, right? What do I, what do I have to do to get you to pick fair, right? As the
00:33:53 ◼ ► best overall iOS app? Well, I mean, I could just put one in my pocket for later on. So I'll give
00:33:58 ◼ ► you fair, right? But dangerous. They just say, this is, this is it. People were in the horse
00:34:02 ◼ ► trading. You're in the room with us now. This is the beauty of the upgrade ease and you don't like
00:34:07 ◼ ► books. So Libby's out. It's a very interesting thing, but like I even struggle to just understand
00:34:13 ◼ ► how renting books from a library works. If you're not in the library, we don't need to get into this
00:34:18 ◼ ► conversation today. Um, so here's my thing. I think we are deciding for the winner and the
00:34:26 ◼ ► nominee and then, and the runners up between carrot drafts and ferrite. That's what we are.
00:34:37 ◼ ► cannot imagine the fact that ferrite has never won an upgrade. Is that right? It's never won.
00:34:42 ◼ ► Ferrite has never won. No, Ferrum. No, Ferrite is never won an upgrade. Oh, wrong, wrong, wrong.
00:34:49 ◼ ► 2015. It won best newcomer. Okay. All right. Well then, then I'm going to say, let's give it to
00:34:56 ◼ ► drafts. Let's do it. I think it's worth it. I think it's, I think it is a worthy winner.
00:35:01 ◼ ► So we're going to say that the winner of the best overall iOS app for 2020 is drafts with the
00:35:07 ◼ ► runners up being carrot weather and ferrite. Sorry Mr. Carrot. Sorry, Brian Carrot. Close. So close.
00:35:13 ◼ ► Can I make a confession about carrot weather? One of the things I don't like about it is the
00:35:30 ◼ ► Well, I think, and I think, I think perhaps it's getting de-emphasized over time, but I get it. It
00:35:36 ◼ ► really did make people pay attention to it. And that's what you want. That's the name of the game.
00:35:41 ◼ ► But it actually prevented me from using it for a long time because although the functionality
00:35:45 ◼ ► was great, I thought some people don't take it seriously. Yeah. Anyway, it's a great app.
00:35:50 ◼ ► I think it would be a shame to get rid of it because it's where the, the kind of like the,
00:36:01 ◼ ► might be the right option going into the future. Who are we to tell Brian Carrot what to do?
00:36:11 ◼ ► It's a great app, regardless. Also, why has Toggle not bought Time-O-Re? Why has that not happened?
00:36:17 ◼ ► What is wrong with them? I don't know. I don't, I don't think I want it to happen because I don't
00:36:21 ◼ ► trust the application development team because they do not do a good job in my opinion of any
00:36:26 ◼ ► of their apps. You know, if they wanted to buy Time-O-Re and let Joe continue doing Joe's great
00:36:31 ◼ ► work, that would be great. But otherwise I want it to live forever. All right, so let's move into
00:36:35 ◼ ► our second category. I don't think we're all going to take this long, but that one, that one was
00:36:39 ◼ ► surprising. Best newcomer iOS app. The Upgradients voted with 3.3% for Hey from Basecamp. 4.5% is
00:36:50 ◼ ► Reader 5 from Silvia Rizzi. And at the second largest percentage of the evening, 38.5% for
00:37:02 ◼ ► WidgetSmith from David Smith. What are your votes? I nominate a few here. So, NetNewsWire got revived
00:37:19 ◼ ► NetNewsWire 5, it's really good. I use it every day. I wasn't using RSS until NetNewsWire 5 came
00:37:25 ◼ ► out and I now use RSS on my iPad every day. So, I'm going to throw that in there. It is new. It is
00:37:33 ◼ ► NetNewsWire, which has been around forever and yet new. I want to mention an app called LongPlay,
00:37:38 ◼ ► which looks at your Apple Music Library and shows the albums in it. And the idea there is it's a way
00:37:44 ◼ ► to visual, Steve Jobs would have loved it. Let's just put it that way. It's like lots of album
00:37:47 ◼ ► covers. You can sort them in different ways by recent or by most plays or by things that you've
00:37:53 ◼ ► not listened to in a while. And then you tap on the album cover and it plays that album straight
00:37:59 ◼ ► through using the music app. Or I don't think you can do Spotify because I don't think it has the
00:38:04 ◼ ► APIs for it, but using the music app, it basically will play that album. So, it's like a single album
00:38:10 ◼ ► browsing and play interface. I think it's really clever. I like it a lot. WidgetSmith, yeah, right?
00:38:17 ◼ ► Like the 39% of Upgradients. Yeah, absolutely. I would just like to correct myself, Jason. It's
00:38:23 ◼ ► actually the third largest. Okay. There was a late entry. A tradition like no other, Myke,
00:38:29 ◼ ► is you trying to compare vote totals and then having to correct it. I think that happens every
00:38:34 ◼ ► year too. Yes, there's a lot. It forms my heart. I think that does happen every year. And I'll
00:38:40 ◼ ► throw in the Fitness Plus app, actually, the Apple Fitness app with Fitness Plus, because I think
00:38:44 ◼ ► that some of the stuff that they have done with that service, which doesn't really have a category,
00:38:48 ◼ ► and the live data from your Apple Watch streaming to your iPad is pretty clever. So, those are the
00:38:55 ◼ ► four that I wanted to mention. I have one and it's WidgetSmith. Yeah. There's so much to it,
00:39:02 ◼ ► right? Like, there's the whole story and the fact that David Smith is a personal friend of both of
00:39:07 ◼ ► us. And that would be fine. You know, like, WidgetSmith probably would have always made it
00:39:12 ◼ ► into this category for me anyway, because I love David's apps and David does a great job. And I was
00:39:18 ◼ ► using WidgetSmith through the beta period. It was powering some widgets that I had on my home screen.
00:39:23 ◼ ► But then WidgetSmith became the most popular app in the world for a couple of months. And so,
00:39:28 ◼ ► you know, like, just the fact that the story and then what David has done with it since,
00:39:34 ◼ ► and how much better that application has become at doing the things that people want it to do,
00:39:39 ◼ ► I think is actually kind of astounding. Like, that over the time that WidgetSmith has been available,
00:39:45 ◼ ► I continue to add more and more widgets to my home screens based on the new types of widgets
00:39:53 ◼ ► or the new types of themes that David is creating. And this isn't just a case of, like, I want to keep
00:39:58 ◼ ► supporting my friend. Like, I'm now, like, I have a little countdown timer on my home screen until
00:40:04 ◼ ► New Year's and stuff like that now. And it's like all this, like, really just beautiful design for
00:40:10 ◼ ► the themes that David has been working on. Like, I just think that it is, it is an astounding app
00:40:16 ◼ ► that caught lightning in a bottle and then in true underscore fashion, he has capitalized on it and
00:40:22 ◼ ► has just made it the best possible version of itself that it can be. I think it's astounding.
00:40:26 ◼ ► - Yeah, well, so here's the funny thing. If this was like a Six Colors piece where I was picking
00:40:34 ◼ ► my favorites, NetNewsWire wins because NetNewsWire changed how I consume information on my iPad in
00:40:39 ◼ ► the morning. Like, it's great. I'm so glad to see that it's back. If you haven't tried it,
00:41:02 ◼ ► - Part of it is just that it seems to work the way I want it to work. I think maybe part of it
00:41:07 ◼ ► is that it is, because of Brent's long history with RSS, it is a, I found a lot of RSS readers
00:41:14 ◼ ► to be very featurey. And in a way, it's sort of like our previous conversation, in a way
00:41:22 ◼ ► that I'm sure they have lots of users who really want all of these features, and I don't. And what
00:41:29 ◼ ► NetNewsWire is to me is simple and does all that I want it to do and nothing else. If it does have
00:41:40 ◼ ► a reading list or stuff like that, I don't know because I don't use those features. I just kind
00:41:45 ◼ ► of want to have some subscriptions and a readable area and be able to tap through to view it in a
00:41:52 ◼ ► web view and like, it does exactly what I want. And after bouncing off of lots of RSS readers,
00:41:58 ◼ ► this simple new NetNewsWire, I didn't bounce off of. I mean, that's sort of how I have to put it,
00:42:05 ◼ ► is I have tried over the years. Have I tried the latest version of all of the RSS readers? No,
00:42:10 ◼ ► I haven't. But over the years I've tried lots of RSS readers on Mac and iOS, and none of them
00:42:15 ◼ ► have stuck. So that's why. But in this case, since this is not my picks, but a collaborative process,
00:42:23 ◼ ► this is what separates us by the way from whatever happens on Connected, your other podcast,
00:42:35 ◼ ► a collaborative process. WidgetSmith was on my list. It was your list and it was number one on
00:42:42 ◼ ► the Upgradients list. So of course, WidgetSmith is the winner. And it is a worthy winner.
00:43:03 ◼ ► This is not a popularity contest for the world. It's a popularity contest with Upgradients and
00:43:08 ◼ ► you and me. But it's still one though. So there you go. So what are we going to, I say we pick
00:43:12 ◼ ► net news while five as one of the ones up and would we pick another one? I want to put longplay
00:43:18 ◼ ► on the list because that's just so rare. It's so rare that I see a new iOS app and I'm like,
00:43:23 ◼ ► Oh, this is delightful. Like the platform has been around so long now that a lot of times you're like,
00:43:27 ◼ ► Oh, it's another one of these, or it's another take on this. And I'm sure there have been apps
00:43:31 ◼ ► that have done this in the past, but like this one really stuck with me as an enjoyable way to kind
00:43:35 ◼ ► of float things back to the top of my music library. I've never heard of this application
00:43:39 ◼ ► before or it hadn't stuck in my mind. And it sounds like a really fun little idea. So moving
00:43:45 ◼ ► to the best overall Mac app, the category, uh, one of the two categories that we created the
00:43:52 ◼ ► Upgradients voting for, because we would struggle with these. Um, and here we go again, 4.2% things
00:43:58 ◼ ► from culture code, which funnily enough, the exact same percentage of the vote that it got for the
00:44:02 ◼ ► iOS category. Just found that funny. 5.4% Safari from Apple and 6.2% Fantastic Al from Flexibits.
00:44:14 ◼ ► - Hmm. Some familiar names there. I have a bunch of nominees in this category. And this is,
00:44:23 ◼ ► five years, especially, oh, kind of rough for the Mac, right? Dark period there, not a lot going on.
00:44:36 ◼ ► So I've got some apps I want to name that I've used on the Mac in the past year that I think
00:44:40 ◼ ► are great. Because again, this is one of those categories where like literally I should just put
00:44:45 ◼ ► BB Edit in my personal hall of fame. It's the app I use the most on the Mac. I love it. It's great.
00:44:49 ◼ ► It keeps getting better. It's amazing. I know I'm sounding like one of those people that turn me
00:44:56 ◼ ► away from apps because they rave about them. It's like, no, no, it's too deep. I can't go there.
00:45:01 ◼ ► But I'm not going to mention BB Edit because I don't know. It's like the air we breathe.
00:45:20 ◼ ► This, when it was first announced a few years ago, I was like, that's interesting, but I don't
00:45:26 ◼ ► believe that it would work. And I tried it out and it was okay, but not great. The transcript
00:45:30 ◼ ► quality isn't great because, you know, machine-based speech to text is not, it's still not great.
00:45:37 ◼ ► You can pay extra to get a good transcript or you can be cheap and get a bad transcript. And I'm
00:45:44 ◼ ► cheap, so I got a bad transcript. But I came back to it because when I was planning on using the,
00:45:49 ◼ ► building the 20 Max for 2020 podcast project with lots of interviews, I thought, how in the world
00:45:55 ◼ ► am I going to do this? And I started to think I'm going to need to get like a transcript with time
00:45:58 ◼ ► code and then like highlight the stuff that I want to take out. And I started to do that. I thought,
00:46:03 ◼ ► this is ridiculous. And then have somebody cut out all those bits and put them in. And I thought,
00:46:07 ◼ ► wait a second, isn't there an app that does this? And I started using Descript and I use it for
00:46:15 ◼ ► every episode of 20 Max for 2020. Couldn't have done it without it. It is kind of magical. It's
00:46:21 ◼ ► not perfect. It's got some issues. I wish it was better in a few ways, but it was a lifesaver for
00:46:26 ◼ ► me. And I cannot believe how good it is at what it does. It seems like something that would be
00:46:31 ◼ ► impossible. It needs some cleanup and their editor, they've got an inline editor and it's not great.
00:46:38 ◼ ► And it doesn't handle conversations very well in terms of like visualizing them. It's a lot
00:46:43 ◼ ► of steps to kind of trim. So what I ended up doing was exporting the final piece out into Logic,
00:46:49 ◼ ► where I felt like I had a more capable editing system, but I could not have done those podcasts
00:46:58 ◼ ► without this app. And it really is for anybody who is editing audio that fits within what Descript is
00:47:04 ◼ ► good at, it's amazing. I think Merlin uses it for Roderick on the line. - He does. Merlin also uses
00:47:12 ◼ ► it for lots of stuff. Like you see him making clips from shows and stuff out of it. It's very
00:47:16 ◼ ► clever. It can create things that you can share. I want to echo that I've used Descript for a couple
00:47:23 ◼ ► of things. One thing of mine was, it was an episode of a show and I had that feeling like,
00:47:30 ◼ ► "Oh, I think there was a curse word that I didn't cut." And Descript allowed me to search for it.
00:47:36 ◼ ► I had cut it, but otherwise it would have been a two hour process of re-listening to the show again.
00:47:41 ◼ ► And I think it's very powerful. I think the stuff that you've been doing for Max for 2020 is great.
00:47:48 ◼ ► What I don't like about it is the thought that people have. I think also the thought that they
00:47:54 ◼ ► try and put out into the world from their marketing of like, this is all you need to edit a podcast.
00:47:59 ◼ ► And I do not agree with that because things like removing ums and removing r's and stuff like that,
00:48:05 ◼ ► just removing them with a machine, I guarantee it's going to sound weird in places. It requires
00:48:10 ◼ ► finessing. - It's good that that feature is great. And I used that feature, but that I think you're
00:48:18 ◼ ► right, which is the challenge that they've got moving forward. And I think they know it at
00:48:23 ◼ ► Descript is they're not great as an audio editor. And I look at it and think, well, I know logic and
00:48:32 ◼ ► I have logic. So why would I ever use their audio editor? Because it's just not that good.
00:48:37 ◼ ► I see, in the long run, they need to, they can't say our product is stage one of a multi-stage
00:48:45 ◼ ► process that leads to a different product that we don't make. They can't do that. So they're just
00:48:49 ◼ ► going to have to get better at building their audio editor and other workflows to smooth out
00:48:54 ◼ ► all that audio. Because that's, I mean, if you listen to 20 Max for 2020, and you heard me say,
00:48:58 ◼ ► Brian Hamilton provided post-production help, I basically handed my logic files to Brian and
00:49:04 ◼ ► Brian went through every single dialogue edit and smooth them all out because they're not good
00:49:10 ◼ ► enough. Like that's the downside of Descript is that you need to do extra work. While amazing and
00:49:17 ◼ ► really magical, it's not really up to my standards straight out of the app. You got to do extra work
00:49:27 ◼ ► and you can do some of that work in the app, but it's not very good. Or you can take it to another
00:49:30 ◼ ► app. Still though, magical, use it all year. Great. Final Cut Pro, I'm going to put on the
00:49:37 ◼ ► list because I made 20 Max for 2020 videos as well. And I do all the total party kill videos
00:49:42 ◼ ► and stuff like that. And I just want to, it's not new, but it's amazing. And on the M1 Max,
00:49:46 ◼ ► it's even more amazing. It's so easy for me to build video projects that look exactly like I want.
00:49:55 ◼ ► And, you know, although professionals have famously complained about the Final Cut Pro 10
00:50:00 ◼ ► interface since the day it started, I love it. It works. It's understandable to me. And in fact,
00:50:07 ◼ ► there are aspects of it that I wish other apps would pick up because I occasionally am in a
00:50:15 ◼ ► different app and I think, why is it not doing this? There are problems with it. It's audio
00:50:20 ◼ ► support is terrible. It's shameful that you can't apply like a master compressor to a project and
00:50:27 ◼ ► stuff like that. It's bizarre, but it's great. So Final Cut Pro on my list. I want to mention
00:50:40 ◼ ► Really great app for photo and image editing. They just, yeah, they're right on the forefront
00:50:50 ◼ ► of trying to push machine learning stuff, not just into iOS, but into the Mac. So I want to
00:50:54 ◼ ► mention Pixelmator. I'm going to throw audio hijacking again. Also not a hall of famer yet,
00:51:10 ◼ ► Catalina, so two reasons. One is Catalina really broke audio apps and the RogueAmoeba apps
00:51:21 ◼ ► specifically. Catalina made a bunch of changes, completely broke them. So part one, I spent all
00:51:27 ◼ ► summer after I moved to Catalina to write about it, having to use a different computer to record
00:51:33 ◼ ► podcasts because I need audio hijack. I have to use it. And it made me understand how much
00:51:54 ◼ ► And they got it out the day that, or not Catalina, Big Sur. They got it out the day that Big Sur came
00:52:01 ◼ ► out, which is amazing. And then it took a little bit of time to get it working on M1, but now I
00:52:08 ◼ ► believe it's working there now too. So although it's not new, it is kind of new. It is kind of
00:52:16 ◼ ► the story that I missed it because of Big Sur, and I appreciate the work they did to get it to work
00:52:23 ◼ ► on Big Sur because it was not easy working with the new security restrictions in Big Sur.
00:52:44 ◼ ► a lot of my to-dos are in a calendar and it's Fantastical. So that's my long list of potential
00:52:51 ◼ ► winners in this category. Yeah, I have two. We spoke about them already. It's Fantastical 3
00:53:06 ◼ ► Fantastical is on all of our lists. AudioHijack is on both of our lists. Putting AudioHijack
00:53:37 ◼ ► Yeah, I know. People are unhappy that they moved to subscription. Maybe I'm going to upset those
00:53:45 ◼ ► people here. But I actually think that the way that they handled the move to subscription
00:53:52 ◼ ► was fair. They messed up some things. There were some issues with the actual transition,
00:53:59 ◼ ► which upset people, which I understood there were some bugs in the way that they did it.
00:54:03 ◼ ► But my understanding is by and large, they kind of locked the features. And if you wanted new
00:54:09 ◼ ► features, you'd have to pay, but all your old features were kept in place. Now, I will say
00:54:15 ◼ ► that was the messaging that they spoke about. If there is asterisks to that, then fine. I am a
00:54:21 ◼ ► paying subscriber and I'm very happy with it. And honestly, as well, I paid for that application
00:54:29 ◼ ► however many years before. Fantastical is one of those types of apps that you kind of want to be
00:54:35 ◼ ► around forever if you use it all the time. I have no problem in paying for it. I have no problem in
00:54:39 ◼ ► supporting the development for the application. I'm more than happy to pay for these kinds of
00:54:51 ◼ ► I actually think that it's good for the application because I talk about this kind of stuff a lot,
00:54:59 ◼ ► make money to make the application. I want the application to stay around. I'm happy to pay them.
00:55:03 ◼ ► Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, I agree. I agree. I think there were some rollout issues and there were
00:55:10 ◼ ► some bugs and it led to some misunderstandings. And there were features that were fundamental
00:55:14 ◼ ► features that were marked as not being available, but there was some confusion there. So I
00:55:21 ◼ ► mean, they were trying. Yeah, that's my feeling is they tried really hard to get it right while
00:55:28 ◼ ► still also doing what was right for their business. And they didn't necessarily execute 100%,
00:55:31 ◼ ► but I think most of the criticism was not coming from the people who were dealing with the
00:55:39 ◼ ► shakiness of some parts of the rollout. I think it was from people who were offended that they
00:55:43 ◼ ► had to pay for software. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know what to do. I mean, it seems weird
00:55:51 ◼ ► to me to say that the best overall Mac app this year was a calendar. That was pretty good.
00:56:07 ◼ ► But they didn't do anything new this year. No, they just, well, I mean, it's best overall,
00:56:13 ◼ ► so it isn't, you know, maybe when did they add the broadcast block? That wasn't this year,
00:56:18 ◼ ► was that was when you had your bachelor party. So that was a while ago. Oh, yeah. It was literally
00:56:23 ◼ ► at your bachelor party when the beta came. Yeah. We spoke about it on the sofa. Yes. Well,
00:56:28 ◼ ► my argument is that I missed it when they broke it and that I'm impressed that they got it unbroken,
00:56:33 ◼ ► given what Apple did to Big Sur, which is great. Like, look, I'm not saying that you always have to
00:56:40 ◼ ► continue to add new features for software to be good because maybe audio hijack is feature
00:56:44 ◼ ► complete. I personally don't think it is. I think that there is still stuff that they can do with
00:56:49 ◼ ► it. The point that I'm making with that is like, Fantastical had a major new version this year,
00:56:57 ◼ ► features of the application better and nicer to use. So I would say that again, this, it would be
00:57:03 ◼ ► better that way. It's on my list. It's on your list. And it was number one in the hearts of the
00:57:06 ◼ ► upgrade ends. So let's do it. Fantastic Al 3 is the winner of the best Mac app for this year.
00:57:13 ◼ ► I think it's easy to put audio hijack in as a runner up. Do you have another runner up that you
00:57:26 ◼ ► Well, that was not going to be my choice. Okay. What would yours be? No, let's do it. Let's do it.
00:57:31 ◼ ► I was going to put Descript in there, but again, I'm also cognizant of the fact that two podcasters
00:57:34 ◼ ► giving out awards, give a lot of awards to podcasts and audio tools and that's maybe over done. So
00:57:39 ◼ ► let's do that. I think that what Pixelmator have done with Pixelmator Pro and continue to do,
00:57:44 ◼ ► is technically very impressive and they're doing stuff that's truly new. So I think that it
00:57:51 ◼ ► deserves some kind of recognition. So the final software pick, uh, well, the final app pick,
00:57:57 ◼ ► we have games coming on later on is the best newcomer Mac app. This is a category that was
00:58:03 ◼ ► interesting. Definitely a lot of new Mac apps this year, um, but not as many as I thought there was
00:58:10 ◼ ► going to be. Um, so we have at 6.4% of the nominations from the upgradients is craft from
00:58:17 ◼ ► Lukey Labs. Craft is the note-taking application that's been become quite popular this year.
00:58:22 ◼ ► 9.8% of the vote is Overcast from Marco Arment. So Overcast, previous Lifetime Achievement Award
00:58:29 ◼ ► winner in the iOS category is now finding itself in the Mac category because of the M1 Macs.
00:58:39 ◼ ► Um, so many, again, again, I think I'm feeling better about the Mac than I have in a while.
00:58:47 ◼ ► I'm gonna mention that new NetNewsWire 5 again, it's brand new. I'm going to mention SwiftBar,
00:58:53 ◼ ► which is the replacement for BitBar that puts information up in your menu bar. I love it.
00:59:17 ◼ ► although there were a bunch of great Pixelmator Pro updates in the 1 range that also came out
00:59:21 ◼ ► this year that I would throw in there, including their, uh, support for AppleScript. Yes, indeed,
00:59:30 ◼ ► Uh, Fantastical 3 could technically be in this category, although we already gave it an award.
00:59:35 ◼ ► I want to mention Service Station, which is this great little utility that lets you, um, it's for
00:59:41 ◼ ► me, basically. Uh, it lets you attach, uh, scripts into the right-click menu in the Finder and a
00:59:49 ◼ ► script or apps and assign them based on file type. And so like, if I right click on a, an image on
00:59:56 ◼ ► the desktop, one of the items in the list is open in Photoshop, which is almost always what I want
01:00:02 ◼ ► to do, but there's also like an upload to six colors and it's right at the top level, not in
01:00:06 ◼ ► a sub menu. And that's, that will kick off a script that will upload it to six colors. And it's just a
01:00:11 ◼ ► nice little, little Mac utility that lets you customize all sorts of stuff that happens when
01:00:17 ◼ ► you right click on a file in the Finder. I like it. That's fun. And it's in the App Store too.
01:00:22 ◼ ► Cause when I hear about apps like this, I get a little bit concerned, right? Like if they're doing
01:00:25 ◼ ► something weird, but I always feel better when I see that they're in the Mac App Store.
01:00:29 ◼ ► Yeah. And so I use, that's what I use now for all of my like weird automations, but I also use it
01:00:33 ◼ ► for a bunch of quick launches. Like the Photoshop one's a great example where I've just assigned to
01:00:37 ◼ ► a bunch of image types, like put, just put open in Photoshop at the top level because I do that so
01:00:42 ◼ ► often. And a lot of, you know, JPEGs are going to open in preview if I double click them and I don't
01:00:47 ◼ ► want to change that association. There's it's complicated. I could imagine with PDFs, like I
01:00:52 ◼ ► don't want to open every PDF in PDF pen, but I do frequently. Yeah. And going to right click open
01:00:58 ◼ ► with us annoying. So yeah, exactly. That's a little step. I want to mention Bartender for
01:01:04 ◼ ► Bartender a long time, long standing Mac utility that lets you simplify your max menu bar. I already
01:01:09 ◼ ► said, I put a lot of things using Swift bar up in my menu bar, but there's too many things up there
01:01:14 ◼ ► and Bartender lets you organize them and hide them, hide a bunch of them. Bartender for like
01:01:18 ◼ ► audio hijack had to be re you know, basically rewritten for big Sur and it's different,
01:01:25 ◼ ► but it still does everything that I wanted it to do. And I love a long standing Mac utility
01:01:31 ◼ ► getting up to speed and Bartender for did that. And I will mention Nova as well, which people
01:01:40 ◼ ► mentioned this is, this is basically the new version of what was Kota panic. Sold the name
01:01:47 ◼ ► Kota to a startup and change their Kota to code editor. And now that it's got a name for the new
01:01:54 ◼ ► version, which is Nova, I have it. I bought it. It's very impressive, especially if you do web
01:01:58 ◼ ► development. Um, I was using it for some of my web stuff too. Um, it's just such a good Mac app and
01:02:04 ◼ ► it's so rare to get these. It's so nice to see these big professional focused on the Mac apps.
01:02:10 ◼ ► And although this is kind of the legacy of Kota, it's also technically a new app. So that's a lot
01:02:16 ◼ ► of new Mac apps. So I will say for me, if you take everything you said about net news, why five,
01:02:23 ◼ ► and I'll apply it to Rita five. Um, I absolutely love Rita. Like the design of it is just works
01:02:30 ◼ ► so well for me. It's a beautifully designed application and I use it on iOS a lot, but I also
01:02:36 ◼ ► use it on Mac a lot. Um, I like that there's parity between the applications on each, on each, um,
01:02:42 ◼ ► of the platforms, but they have different features in places where it makes the most sense. Like for
01:02:47 ◼ ► example, the share menu, isn't that good on the Mac as it was on iOS, right? With extensions and
01:02:53 ◼ ► all that kind of stuff. So to develop a Silvio put in some, uh, actions that you can perform just in
01:03:00 ◼ ► like the toolbar of the application. So like one of mine, the main thing that I do is I take
01:03:05 ◼ ► articles and save them to Apple notes so I can refer to them later, right? When I'm sitting down
01:03:10 ◼ ► to do my show prep and on reader on the Mac, there's just a little icon that I can press with
01:03:15 ◼ ► the notes icon on it. And I click it and it's gonna save it to notes and stuff like that,
01:03:19 ◼ ► but just overall the Polish and the design of this application is fantastic. I absolutely love it.
01:03:25 ◼ ► I think it's beautifully designed and is truly excellent on all platforms. And I wanted to put
01:03:30 ◼ ► it in here, the Mac, I would also like to give, um, a nod to two of yours. So messages, which is
01:03:38 ◼ ► great, but I don't want to give it the win here, but I love messages on the Mac. Uh, the reason I
01:03:43 ◼ ► don't want to give it a win is because we're only saying this because Apple let messages get so bad.
01:03:48 ◼ ► Like nothing is great about the new messages app except for the fact that it's finally exists.
01:03:54 ◼ ► Yeah. Right. No, you're right. It's the classic thing of like, if Apple does a bad job for a long
01:03:58 ◼ ► time and then finally does a good job or its job, is that a word worthy? Probably not. Probably.
01:04:05 ◼ ► Uh, but you know, like message is notable because it's a catalyst app and I don't think anybody
01:04:11 ◼ ► notices it. People will tell you, I know it's it and maybe they do. Some people are much more
01:04:15 ◼ ► particular. Many of my friends, but I don't even, I don't even know. Right. It's like, it's a Mac app
01:04:21 ◼ ► to me. Like I don't see how it could be any different. Uh, but I wanted to mention bartender
01:04:25 ◼ ► four as well because bartender four, you could see they had to start again, but I actually prefer the
01:04:31 ◼ ► way it works right where you like hover over and it expands. And I think they've done a really good
01:04:37 ◼ ► job. And from going back to the beginning of an application starting again, I actually think
01:04:43 ◼ ► they've rebuilt it to a better place than the previous versions of bartender. So I would tip
01:04:48 ◼ ► my hat to them because I think that was an incredible achievement that they achieved the
01:04:52 ◼ ► bartender four team. So what are we going to do? Well, okay, so we can both agree on bartender.
01:04:58 ◼ ► Yep. But you and the upgrading is going to agree on Nova. Yeah. Nova's not for me, right? Like,
01:05:05 ◼ ► sure. It's barely for me. Yeah, it's barely for me. Exactly. Right. But it's so, it's so impressive
01:05:11 ◼ ► with what it does and that it's a, uh, an actual Mac app. I love how many options there are,
01:05:17 ◼ ► but there aren't as many options as there should be because there should be more iOS apps in this
01:05:21 ◼ ► category. Um, we're going to talk about that. I think for their service to the Mac and for the
01:05:28 ◼ ► fact that this app is, uh, is so impressive, uh, I, we should give it to, to panic. Yeah. Nova.
01:05:35 ◼ ► I really liked the idea of giving panic an award because they are very, very good at what they do.
01:05:41 ◼ ► And I think award worthy. Um, let's put bartender four and as a, as a runner up and what do you
01:05:49 ◼ ► want to put any other runners up in here? I mean, I would put messages in as a runner up.
01:05:53 ◼ ► Um, why don't we put, uh, since you liked how I described it, let's put service station in there
01:06:05 ◼ ► I've left the tab open in Safari for that because I'm checking it out to the show today.
01:06:09 ◼ ► So that concludes the app portion of the show. I think probably the highest contested set of
01:06:18 ◼ ► categories, but we still have many more to come. So who knows? This episode is also brought to you
01:06:23 ◼ ► by our friends over at sane box. I really love sane box because it helps get my email under control.
01:06:31 ◼ ► Email is can be for so many of us, a huge time waster, but work, you can spend so much time
01:06:38 ◼ ► tending to your inbox that actually a lot of the time becomes like half of your job. There have
01:06:44 ◼ ► been studies that have been found to say this, right? Like people know that what they're doing
01:06:53 ◼ ► that we all know that we get so much more email than we need. We get emails that don't need
01:07:01 ◼ ► You know, you can kind of get that like gray area between like what is spam and what is meant for
01:07:06 ◼ ► you. There's that whole area in the middle. It's like, I don't need this email, but it's not spam.
01:07:17 ◼ ► It automatically gets these emails filtered for you. So you just see the messages that need your
01:07:23 ◼ ► focus. You don't have to switch email apps because it works in whichever way you'd like to do email,
01:07:28 ◼ ► whichever client you use, whichever service you use. It has some fantastic features like
01:07:32 ◼ ► the same black hole feature, which is something that I use a lot. I get myself on these mailing
01:07:37 ◼ ► lists that aren't real mailing lists. It's people telling me how much someone should be on my
01:07:41 ◼ ► podcast that they never listened to. And I can't get rid of them because it's not like something I
01:07:46 ◼ ► can unsubscribe to, but these people keep emailing me. But if I drag their email into the same black
01:07:51 ◼ ► hole folder, I never hear from that person again because same box filters it out before it ever
01:07:55 ◼ ► arrives in my inbox. Super excellent stuff. I also use same later, which is that's where
01:08:00 ◼ ► same box analyzes my email and the things that it thinks that I don't need go into the same
01:08:05 ◼ ► later folder. But as soon as I do something with them, it will move them to where I need it to be.
01:08:09 ◼ ► And also same news, which collects up all of my email newsletters. But there's so many types of
01:08:13 ◼ ► filters that same box can apply for you. It's really, really awesome. Go and see today how same
01:08:18 ◼ ► box can magically remove distractions from your email inbox with a free two week trial.
01:08:23 ◼ ► Go to same box.com/upgrade FM today to start your free trial and get a $25 credit as S A N E B O X.
01:09:06 ◼ ► I usually let you get what you want in this category. And so it will be this time. I will
01:09:13 ◼ ► mention three games that I really enjoyed this year, two of which are iOS games. So I'll mention
01:09:19 ◼ ► them again. Yeah, I mean, there is we do have an entire category for iOS game of the year.
01:09:23 ◼ ► You are performing the sin that many of our Upgradients performed this year. I don't know why
01:09:29 ◼ ► we need to put iOS games in the game of the year category when we have an iOS game of the year
01:09:33 ◼ ► category. But nevertheless, let me not let me not speak of them then I will not speak of them now.
01:09:37 ◼ ► I will speak of them in like two minutes. But exactly. I will say the game that I played all
01:09:41 ◼ ► the way through and dearly love this year. And it's not a new game. But it was the game of the
01:09:46 ◼ ► year for me, not on an iOS device. And that was something called Astro Bot Rescue Mission
01:09:53 ◼ ► recommended to me by James Thompson. I played it on the PSVR. And it was delightful. It was so good
01:10:01 ◼ ► as a virtual reality platformer where you you control a little robot and you stand there and
01:10:08 ◼ ► watch the robot and a platformer controlling a remote character in a platformer is what
01:10:15 ◼ ► all platformers are doing it in a 3D world where you're standing inside of it and having to look
01:10:21 ◼ ► and be like, can I jump from there to there? How far away is that? It was great. It's such a great
01:10:28 ◼ ► game. And now anybody who bought a PS5, I think it comes with this Astro Bot game. No, it's a
01:10:35 ◼ ► different one. It's called Astro's Playroom. No, no. That's what I that's what I meant. This
01:10:41 ◼ ► Astro Bot. Not this game. This Astro Bot has a game. Oh, yes. This is this is Sony's new like
01:10:49 ◼ ► character. Yeah. So there's a there's a new Astro Bot adventure. If you get a PlayStation 5, it's
01:10:55 ◼ ► this guy. It's adorable. This little robot. So cute. And the VR experience for a for a first VR
01:11:02 ◼ ► game that I'd ever played. Just breathtaking. So funny to see how you translate a traditional
01:11:11 ◼ ► originally 2D platformer into a virtual world. Oh, so good. Play the whole thing all the way
01:11:18 ◼ ► through. And you know me, Myke, I don't do that with games. Don't play them all the way. I don't
01:11:23 ◼ ► invest hours and hours in console video games. It doesn't happen. I played Astro Bot all the way
01:11:27 ◼ ► through. Love it. It's a super great game. It's a 2018 release, but that doesn't matter. But it
01:11:32 ◼ ► doesn't matter for me. It's my game of the year. Exactly. And that's perfectly fine because it is
01:11:36 ◼ ► fantastic. And the reason that Astro's Playroom exists is because Astro Bot Rescue Missions is
01:11:42 ◼ ► so good and people loved it so much. Like Sony understand that they have fun little character
01:11:46 ◼ ► here and they keep doing really fun things with that. I think this is the third game they've had
01:11:55 ◼ ► Jason, I don't know if that's the thing that's entered the Snell household yet or is planning to,
01:12:00 ◼ ► you're going to love Astro's Playroom, my friend. Like if you liked Astro Bot Rescue Missions.
01:12:06 ◼ ► Just got to find a PS5. That's the problem. My son for Christmas got a, opened up one of his
01:12:13 ◼ ► presents. It's a piece of paper with a picture of a PS5 on it saying, you will get a PS5.
01:12:18 ◼ ► Oh, so sad. I feel for him. I really do. I really feel for him. I know how hard that's been for a
01:12:23 ◼ ► lot of people. Again, I think we're going to talk about that later on in the episode too.
01:12:50 ◼ ► aren't typically game of a time. Yep, exactly right. No, it's emblematic of this year. It came
01:12:58 ◼ ► out just as lockdowns were happening around the world. So people stayed back and played
01:13:02 ◼ ► cooperatively. It is a game that is continuing to be played in my household. It came out in March.
01:13:10 ◼ ► We play it every day. It's beautiful. It's fantastic. Animal Crossing New Horizons would
01:13:17 ◼ ► have been one of my picks a game of the year, regardless of the pandemic, because I love the
01:13:21 ◼ ► series and have done for years. And it is a vastly improved version of Animal Crossing to the games
01:13:30 ◼ ► that it has preceded. It is not without fault, but that's Nintendo always. Nintendo always have
01:13:35 ◼ ► faults. And honestly, it's part of their weird charm that their games are never really perfect.
01:13:40 ◼ ► Because even like the best Nintendo game, in my opinion, ever made, Legends is out of Breath of
01:13:45 ◼ ► the Wild is also not a perfect game, because it has basically no story, which is really weird.
01:13:51 ◼ ► But Animal Crossing New Horizons is a phenomenon. It's been a phenomenon. It's one of those rare
01:13:58 ◼ ► games that has broken out into popular culture and people are buying switches to play it.
01:14:03 ◼ ► Nintendo has done a very, very good job over the year of adding in new stuff to keep you
01:14:32 ◼ ► Sure, it's also an iOS game, but you know, it is on other platforms. I get it. But it's also
01:14:36 ◼ ► an iOS game. It is primarily not an iOS game. It has an iOS version. But like the game in the way
01:14:43 ◼ ► it's popular is like played on PC, but lots of people play on iOS too. It being cross-platform,
01:15:06 ◼ ► iOS game of the year time. The Upgradians voted thusly. At 3.3%, The Last Campfire by Hello Games.
01:15:16 ◼ ► At 19.6%, Among Us from InnerSloth. And at 22.1%, Good Sudoku by Zach Gage and Jack Slashinger.
01:15:25 ◼ ► You had a bunch of games that got brought from your game of the year category into your iOS game
01:15:36 ◼ ► game of the year. Good Sudoku. I didn't play Sudoku before this game. This game professes
01:15:48 ◼ ► I'm pretty good. I'm pretty good. I'm not great. The puzzles, the hard puzzles are really hard,
01:15:53 ◼ ► the highest level puzzles I knew hints for. But it taught me this game and it's a lot of fun and,
01:15:59 ◼ ► of course, beautifully designed. I like that game a lot. I want to nominate Roundguard,
01:16:04 ◼ ► which is an Apple Arcade game. We talked about it here. It's a roguelike where you're like a
01:16:13 ◼ ► roguelike every time. Roguelike Pagle. Roguelike Pagle, exactly. It's really good. My only
01:16:19 ◼ ► hesitation here is that I played it a lot and then they did an update where they added all of
01:16:24 ◼ ► these other gameplay elements and I just stopped playing it because I was getting close to doing
01:16:32 ◼ ► everything I needed to do using the gameplay elements that I knew and I felt like they swept
01:16:39 ◼ ► the rug out from under me. And rather than having it be like, "Once you're done with this, you can
01:16:44 ◼ ► turn on this feature or add this new thing in," they just changed the game and I literally have
01:16:49 ◼ ► not played it since then. So I don't know what that says about how game updates should work,
01:16:56 ◼ ► but it really turned me off. But I had enjoyed it up to then. It was a lot of fun. And a fit,
01:17:01 ◼ ► as I said in the episode when we talked about it, it fit with the way that I want to play
01:17:05 ◼ ► a lot of games, which is I want to be able to sit down and feel like I played a complete sort
01:17:09 ◼ ► of session and have it be relatively short. And if I have a little more time, I can play another
01:17:13 ◼ ► session of it right then. But what I don't want to do is feel like I'm making an enormous commitment
01:17:18 ◼ ► and Roundguard was good for that. And then speaking of that, a similar thing, two spies.
01:17:26 ◼ ► Two spies is... That is my favorite iOS game of the year. It is a turn-based spy versus spy program.
01:17:38 ◼ ► They just got an update to do season one. It's almost like a board game. It's a strategy game,
01:17:45 ◼ ► but if you've got iOS devices in your house, you play against someone else. They're on their
01:17:49 ◼ ► device. You're on your device. You're kind of sneaking around Europe trying to find the location
01:17:54 ◼ ► of the other spy and assassinate them before you are assassinated. It's really good. And you may
01:18:04 ◼ ► know the developer because Alan Pike from Steam Clock Software is... I think it's his baby, or at
01:18:10 ◼ ► least he is one of the parents of two spies. It's really good and a lot of fun. And I had enjoyed
01:18:18 ◼ ► playing that with the computer opponents and in my house against my wife where we try to assassinate
01:18:23 ◼ ► each other on two spies. Oh nice. Okay, so I'm going to bring the mood down a little bit.
01:18:29 ◼ ► I have realized in creating the upgrade, my nominations for the upgradees, that one of the
01:18:36 ◼ ► side effects of 2020 for reasons I have no idea why is I haven't really played any iOS games this
01:18:41 ◼ ► year, Jason. I don't know why. Too much time in Animal Crossing. I don't even think it's that
01:18:48 ◼ ► because, I mean, it would have been that case between March and May, but Animal Crossing now,
01:18:53 ◼ ► for me, is at most 10 minutes a day. And Two Spies is a game that I've had installed on my devices
01:19:01 ◼ ► forever and if needed to play. I've dabbled of a few, right? Like I played Round God, I played a
01:19:07 ◼ ► bunch of the Apple Arcade games, but no game this year has really stuck with me that I feel like I
01:19:15 ◼ ► have an iOS game of the year. Like, good Sudoku is great, but I don't like Sudoku, right? Yeah.
01:19:22 ◼ ► You know, it's just a shame for me because Zach Gage, who I think is the best iOS game developer
01:19:30 ◼ ► I can appreciate that Zach Gage is good Sudoku, who worked with Jack Sheslinger on this.
01:19:39 ◼ ► Nope. I know it's fantastic. I've tried it, it's fantastic, but it's not for me. So I don't have
01:19:53 ◼ ► Great. It's great. It's an iOS only game by indie iOS developers. It's really fun. They just did a
01:20:03 ◼ ► big upgrade with better AIs and stuff. We should definitely put a good Sudoku as a runner up.
01:20:13 ◼ ► And I'd actually like to put Roundguard as a runner up too, because I like that. But we could
01:20:20 ◼ ► I just put Roundguard in as the runner up. So Two Spies is the winner with good Sudoku and Roundguard
01:20:24 ◼ ► as the runners up. Because Roundguard is a game that I liked, but I think the difference is that
01:20:30 ◼ ► every iOS game that I've played this year, I've bounced off of very quickly. I don't know why,
01:20:35 ◼ ► but that's just the way it's been for me. Favorite movie of the year, the weirdest category.
01:20:44 ◼ ► we cut off the awards a week ago. A couple of movies have come out since then. Soul and
01:21:11 ◼ ► Don't be turned off by the fact that it's Andy Samberg. Some people don't like Andy Samberg.
01:21:16 ◼ ► So here's my pitch just really quickly for Palm Springs, which is, you know, Groundhog Day?
01:21:40 ◼ ► Yeah, it got bought. It was bought at a film festival. So Hulu took it in the US and it's
01:21:54 ◼ ► I'm not sure about this one. I wonder what our upgrade Ian's are doing at movie theaters, but
01:22:08 ◼ ► I'll just say it like now, Hamilton is one of the only movies I've seen that came out in 2020,
01:22:14 ◼ ► and I loved it. I think Hamilton, Kate has pointed out to me that Tenet is out on DVD now.
01:22:37 ◼ ► I've watched it a couple of times since it came out. I'm super into it. So it is my pick and
01:23:24 ◼ ► Yeah. Well, that's, that's for sure. That's for sure. But I'm going to go with you. I think,
01:23:28 ◼ ► I think my most delightful film experience of the year was watching Hamilton on release day.
01:23:36 ◼ ► Cause they did a really good job as somebody who loves that show and has seen it in person
01:23:44 ◼ ► All right. So let's do that and let's declare Hamilton as the winner. And I would say Soul
01:23:52 ◼ ► Sounds good. Hamilton, a movie due to be released in theaters in 2021, pulled forward and wins.
01:24:04 ◼ ► Favorite TV show and then there's been a lot more action in this category than the movie category.
01:24:33 ◼ ► about the Mandalorian, if you subscribed to Upgrade Plus, we had a whole big conversation in it.
01:24:48 ◼ ► And this one is the highest percentage in the Upgrading's picks of any win in any category
01:25:02 ◼ ► That actually didn't come up very high, which is surprising. I think people forget that
01:25:20 ◼ ► I am a little bit too, but, um, and I, so this is funny because I wrote, I just wrote down
01:25:26 ◼ ► Ted Lasso in our document. It was like, clearly it's Ted Lasso. I wasn't really thinking about
01:25:50 ◼ ► in this list because it didn't just because a lot of people hadn't seen it. Cause if you've
01:26:18 ◼ ► of a premise that I've seen, um, there, there are things in that show, one, the movie is
01:26:38 ◼ ► and I said, it's the closest to This Is Spinal Tap that I've ever found in terms of tone.
01:26:43 ◼ ► And for somebody who owns This Is Spinal Tap in like eight different forms of media and
01:26:55 ◼ ► I've ever seen to getting the vibe of This Is Spinal Tap, uh, except it's about vampires
01:26:59 ◼ ► instead of rock stars who aren't as different as you might think. Um, it's, it's great.
01:27:19 ◼ ► - Mandalorian is about a TV show than Ted Lasso. Now, I understand what I'm saying here.
01:27:47 ◼ ► - Yeah, right. That's true. You did it really fast. So what I'll say is, I think season one
01:27:58 ◼ ► of episodes where I realized I really loved it. Season two, I liked all the way through.
01:28:02 ◼ ► And yet at the same time, I don't know, I think it suffers, every individual episode of the
01:28:07 ◼ ► Mandalorian season two is great. I think it suffers a little bit from, in hindsight, being,
01:28:19 ◼ ► - And I didn't, I think that it actually is weakened a little bit by the fact that it's
01:28:41 ◼ ► it doesn't matter. Why does Cara Dune get a badge at one point and, you know, is Boba Fett around?
01:28:46 ◼ ► Like, you start to think, wait a second, are these all spin-off TV shows of the Mandalorian?
01:28:51 ◼ ► And the answer, Francis, yes, they are. So I don't know, but it was great. It was great.
01:28:59 ◼ ► I think Ted Lasso is fundamentally the best show of the year, but The Mandalorian is legitimately
01:29:11 ◼ ► And I think that the, as you say, right, we agree, The Mandalorian and then what we do in the shadows
01:29:19 ◼ ► are our runners up. - Yes, but shout out to the Queen's Gambit and that 8% vote. That was,
01:29:24 ◼ ► I enjoyed that a lot. That was a show that I really enjoyed this year. It was very well done
01:29:30 ◼ ► and 2021 is going to be an even better one, I think. - Yeah, I got a long, long, long list.
01:29:36 ◼ ► I discovered Taskmaster this year and I love Taskmaster too. That's such a great show. So
01:29:42 ◼ ► a lot of good TV. That's why I haven't seen so many movies is that there was a lot of good TV
01:29:46 ◼ ► this year. - I think that's going to be a trend going into the future, right? Like TV. - If they
01:29:50 ◼ ► can make more episodes of TV, I think we're about to enter a soft spot where the pandemic is going to
01:30:01 ◼ ► - Your favorite category. - This is like game of the year. This is the flip side. This is where
01:30:06 ◼ ► I pick the winner. - Favorite book. - Yeah, that's right. - This, I mean, okay, so in Upgrade Plus
01:30:16 ◼ ► upgrade and additional content. In Upgrade Plus today, we're going to talk about how I compile the
01:30:22 ◼ ► lists for the upgrade insults. The book category is the hardest one to put together because
01:30:31 ◼ ► the variance in the way that people answer this question, whether it's like the title and the
01:30:38 ◼ ► author or the title and no author or the way that they write title and author, this is very hard to
01:30:44 ◼ ► put together. Nevertheless, 4 point, and plus, this is the one that typically has the lowest votes
01:30:50 ◼ ► for the winners because there's so many answers put in. So 4.2% is Rhythm of War by Brandon Sanderson.
01:31:07 ◼ ► I love that Dan wins this category from the Upgradients. The Upgradients love Dan Morin.
01:31:29 ◼ ► that I'm going to mention, and then I will declare a winner, and books by two of my friends will be
01:31:41 ◼ ► - My favorite book of the year is a book by Argeny Martine called A Memory Called Empire.
01:31:51 ◼ ► It, I was just looking through my Goodreads. It's one of two books that I marked this year as a five
01:31:58 ◼ ► star. It's great. I mean, it's great. It's weird. I'm sure it's not for everybody. You don't have to
01:32:09 ◼ ► have read anything else to read it. It's a science fiction novel about somebody from kind of the
01:32:14 ◼ ► outskirts of a giant galactic empire going to the capital, and there's a lot of weird things that
01:32:21 ◼ ► happen, and the capital, the culture of this empire is very strange. But the book is, it's a
01:32:26 ◼ ► fun ride, but it's also a, got a lot to say about culture, and I mean, it's in the title, about
01:32:35 ◼ ► imperialism, and it was great. It was legitimately great. It's a first novel too. Blows me away. This
01:32:41 ◼ ► is her first novel. Loved it. So that's the, that's going to be the winner because it's the
01:32:48 ◼ ► - Period. I want to plug the Aleph Extraction, of course. Olive, the olive extraction. It makes
01:32:57 ◼ ► - No, it's all, Aleph, I'm told it's Aleph, Aleph Extraction. I don't know. Aleph Extraction.
01:33:08 ◼ ► - So let's make that an honorable mention because the Upgradients wanted it. And I'm going to throw
01:33:13 ◼ ► in a nonfiction pick that I think people like if they haven't read it. It's called The End
01:33:20 ◼ ► of Everything, Astrophysically Speaking by Katie Mack. A book about all the different ways that
01:33:27 ◼ ► the universe can end. One of which is probably how it will end, but we will all be gone by the
01:33:32 ◼ ► time it happens, probably. Don't worry too much about all of it, but it's a very entertaining
01:33:38 ◼ ► book that tries to deal with some big issues in science in a way that regular people can
01:33:58 ◼ ► This episode is brought to you by Hover, one of Relay FM's longest running sponsors. When
01:34:03 ◼ ► you have that one big idea, where are you going to go? Look, your business starts with a domain name
01:34:08 ◼ ► for many entrepreneurs. Hover is that first big leap. And it's a great one because Hover have
01:34:12 ◼ ► over 300 domain name extensions to choose from. So no matter what it is you're looking to build,
01:34:17 ◼ ► there is a domain name waiting for it. It's going to fit perfectly. They have excellent
01:34:24 ◼ ► get up and running quickly. Hover are dedicated to getting you online and not upselling you. And
01:34:28 ◼ ► this is one of my favorite things. The user experience, the user interface, super clean,
01:34:33 ◼ ► really easy. They give you free whois privacy so bad guys don't get your information on any domain
01:34:38 ◼ ► that supports it. And I love just how easy the dashboard is to use. So one of the things that
01:34:43 ◼ ► I'll typically do with Hover is I have an idea and I create a domain name and I want to forward
01:34:48 ◼ ► it somewhere. Like for example, upgradeis.com was bought on Hover and it's forwarded over to
01:34:52 ◼ ► the platform that we use it for. The same as upgradeis.vote which is a domain that we own.
01:34:58 ◼ ► So every year I forward it to the Google form and it's so easy for me to go into the Hover dashboard
01:35:03 ◼ ► and set these forwards where they need to go. I really really love it for that. Dot Inc is a new
01:35:08 ◼ ► premium domain name extension for businesses that want to be taken seriously. If you checked if your
01:35:13 ◼ ► brand name is currently available, don't let somebody else beat you to your brand's dot inc
01:35:17 ◼ ► domain. From small startups to large enterprises, brands are taking notice of the credibility of
01:35:23 ◼ ► this dot inc domain. Over 56% of Forbes most valuable brands have registered their domain
01:35:28 ◼ ► names including PayPal, Fox, Amazon, Walmart, Facebook and many many more. Millions of company
01:35:36 ◼ ► names entered inc. Now your domain name can too. Upgrade your domain to the perfect match and join
01:35:41 ◼ ► over 56% of Forbes most valuable brands and register your dot inc domain today. But Hover
01:35:47 ◼ ► have as I said over 300 domain name extensions. They have what you're looking for. Go to hover.com/upgrade
01:35:53 ◼ ► and you'll get a 10% discount on all new purchases. That's hover.com/upgrade. Make a name for yourself
01:36:06 ◼ ► So let's so we've we've okay so we have finished our app category we have finished our media
01:36:12 ◼ ► categories now we are moving into kind of what I think of as the technology hardware categories and
01:36:19 ◼ ► we will talk now about our favorite Apple product of the year. Upgradients voted thusly 12.3% is the
01:36:27 ◼ ► Magic Keyboard for iPad 13.1% for the iPhone 12 mini. This was a surprise to me Jason. I didn't
01:36:37 ◼ ► expect the mini to not only get this high but it beat all of the other iPhones by quite a margin
01:37:02 ◼ ► It has. My list is the Upgradients list. Okay. All three of those are the three that I wanted
01:37:15 ◼ ► to nominate. Okay. Do you have a different order? Well I haven't ordered them yet but I do. I do
01:37:24 ◼ ► have a different order. All right. And this is gonna this is gonna be I'm not I'm not sure what
01:37:30 ◼ ► we're gonna do because I think my favorite oh oh I don't I can't even decide I think we have we have
01:37:39 ◼ ► the life-changing hardware coming up. I could make a very strong argument that the Magic Keyboard for
01:37:44 ◼ ► iPad Pro is life-changing hardware. Okay. It has it has improved the way that I use my iPad Pro a lot.
01:37:51 ◼ ► It might be my favorite Apple product of the year but I'm very torn because that M1 MacBook Air is
01:38:00 ◼ ► amazing for what it does and what it costs. It's amazing. I love it. But the Magic Keyboard
01:38:10 ◼ ► I just I just because the MacBook Air came out recently and I love the iPhone 12 mini too. Don't
01:38:15 ◼ ► get me wrong I love it too. But the Magic Keyboard came out a long time ago but it's just so good.
01:38:24 ◼ ► I think it might be my favorite but it's close. What about you? Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro.
01:38:31 ◼ ► M1 MacBook Pro. I don't have an Air. iPhone 12 Pro Max. Of course. That's my three. Now
01:38:54 ◼ ► One of them is that you know we've so much has happened like the Magic Keyboard came out at the
01:39:01 ◼ ► very beginning of lockdowns. It was March that it was announced. I think it shipped in April.
01:39:08 ◼ ► But also I have products that were kind of like this one for a while. You know like what it
01:39:14 ◼ ► allowed me to do. Magic Keyboard is obviously so much better at it by integrating the trackpad
01:39:35 ◼ ► So I'll tell you right now Jason I have not used my 12.9 inch iPad Pro in about two months.
01:39:47 ◼ ► Sure. Nearly every day for stuff but it's not work really anymore. If I'm working I'm using a Mac.
01:40:05 ◼ ► I adore it. Touch ID is amazing. Yep. Right. The screen is fantastic. It's incredibly fast.
01:40:15 ◼ ► I plug it into monitors frequently. Perfect. What's great. There's a little bug but it works
01:40:22 ◼ ► super great. Sometimes I have to just like turn the monitor on and off again. I don't know why
01:40:26 ◼ ► it happens but sometimes I end up with like half of the laptop screen on the monitor screen.
01:40:32 ◼ ► Whatever. It's not a problem. I don't care. The ways in which I work have been forced to change
01:40:46 ◼ ► And it just happens to have happened at a time where I am more interested in the Mac than I have
01:40:53 ◼ ► been in years because the Mac is more interesting than it has been in years. So I expect that over
01:41:01 ◼ ► the next year things are going to rebalance a little bit. But I do expect that from now
01:41:07 ◼ ► for the long term future I will be using the Mac more than I have done. It's a platform that I'm
01:41:15 ◼ ► using to do my work rather than it just being the platform that I use to do my recording. Right.
01:41:24 ◼ ► So I'm very torn. It is for me between those two things because the magic keyboard for iPad Pro
01:41:31 ◼ ► is really brilliant. It's an absolutely brilliant product that totally changes how you use the iPad.
01:41:37 ◼ ► But the M1 MacBook Pro is so much better than my other MacBook Pros that I've had in the past.
01:41:46 ◼ ► Like by a country mile that computer is better. And so I am really genuinely struggling with what
01:41:57 ◼ ► I would pick here. But then I have the problem of the M1 MacBook Pro isn't the product that's
01:42:01 ◼ ► going to win it anyway. Like if it's going to go to one of them it should go to the MacBook Air.
01:42:05 ◼ ► Well. But I don't want to discount the fact that the magic keyboard for iPad Pro turns the iPad
01:42:10 ◼ ► into a different thing. My iPad usage doesn't work anymore without the magic keyboard. Here's
01:42:17 ◼ ► the funny thing just behind the scenes. I think both of these products are going to get some level
01:42:24 ◼ ► of acclaim in the upgrade ease because there are two categories coming up. As they should.
01:42:42 ◼ ► achievement this year is the M1. Yeah. I am going to endorse that and say let's choose the M1 MacBook
01:42:47 ◼ ► Air. Yeah. The favorite Apple product of the year. It's so exciting. It's so incredible.
01:42:53 ◼ ► You know they this product potentially changes all of computing now. You know it's funny we'll
01:43:00 ◼ ► talk about 20 max or 2020 later on but you know one of the episodes is the MacBook Air.
01:43:11 ◼ ► They became thin and light steps. That was the thing. The M1 is is probably going to be a similar
01:43:17 ◼ ► point where like no no computers should be on power like it's time to move away from x86 because
01:43:24 ◼ ► look at what this can do and we could be in a I think I think personally we could be in that kind
01:43:29 ◼ ► of area. Let's go with magic keyboard for iPad Pro as a runner up and I'm happy to put the iPhone
01:43:35 ◼ ► 12 mini in there as well as a get me in the upgrade is what we want. Yeah. Look look it's it's kind of
01:43:42 ◼ ► like for every reason that you would give the mini except for one is the same reason that I go for
01:43:50 ◼ ► the iPhone 12 Pro Max. You know the one reason that's different is there hasn't been something
01:43:55 ◼ ► like this but it's the point of like people that love that phone really love that phone. You know
01:43:59 ◼ ► what that's the same for me right because the iPhone 12 Pro Max is everything I want out of an
01:44:04 ◼ ► iPhone. So it's a similar reason so I'm happy to grow on that. There is a whole world of technology
01:44:10 ◼ ► though Jason that is not made by Apple so we have our favorite non-Apple product of the year.
01:44:16 ◼ ► At 4.2% the Peloton Faith will come out for the Peloton Bike Plus. At 6.2% is the Xbox Series X.
01:44:30 ◼ ► and if there was only one console I think they may have been bumped up a little higher but they
01:44:37 ◼ ► would not have toppled Sony. I did actually do the math on this. They would not have toppled Sony at
01:44:41 ◼ ► 17.8% with the Sony PlayStation 5 as the upgradience pick for favorite non-Apple product of the year.
01:44:48 ◼ ► What have you got Jason Snell? I have two things that I got basically for Christmas. Okay. Although
01:44:57 ◼ ► one of them was a little bit earlier. I'll just mention them because these are the the non-Apple
01:45:02 ◼ ► products that I've enjoyed this year so far. One is I got a new Roomba. Okay. Listeners to upgrade
01:45:11 ◼ ► will know that a couple years ago I got a Roomba just you know to try it out a low-end Roomba. I
01:45:14 ◼ ► got the i7 this time. I got the one that knows where it's going. Do you have the thing where
01:45:19 ◼ ► empties itself? Yes I do. Oh all right we need to talk about this. Not now. Yeah it sounds like
01:45:26 ◼ ► a jet engine taking a jet plane taking off it's ridiculous but it's the best and having the ability
01:45:31 ◼ ► to say hey little robot go clean the back of the house go clean the bedroom. Okay all right we'll
01:45:38 ◼ ► talk about this later on. People are working in the front of the house it's fun. And I got
01:45:42 ◼ ► an Oculus Quest too. Okay. Yeah see the PSVR convinced me that VR games are fun. And the Quest
01:45:51 ◼ ► is the best. And the Quest is the best and it doesn't have cabling like the PSVR it's such a
01:45:57 ◼ ► hassle to make sure the cables are all set up right. And it doesn't have that stupid camera.
01:46:01 ◼ ► And I yeah you have to set up the camera and I didn't want to pay even more to get the PlayStation
01:46:07 ◼ ► move controllers so I was just using a standard PlayStation controller whereas the Quest comes with
01:46:12 ◼ ► two hand controllers that are essentially like the move controllers. Yeah they're really good. So
01:46:17 ◼ ► it's it's really good I've only had it for a week but I'm very impressed with it it's a lot of fun.
01:46:24 ◼ ► VR games are fun. I played Vader Immortal over the weekend. Did a little Beat Saber which is
01:46:32 ◼ ► hilarious. It's very fun. And yeah I'm very impressed that it is just being able to map out
01:46:42 ◼ ► the fact that it's got I mean we should talk about it later. The fact that it's got a basically an
01:46:46 ◼ ► AR mode where you can see what's around you so you don't step on things and then paint on the floor
01:46:51 ◼ ► where you want your current play area to be. It's so smart it's so good and and having had the PSVR
01:46:56 ◼ ► experience I have appreciation for all the things that it does well because the PSVR as much fun as
01:47:04 ◼ ► it was to use that for the games that I played on it was you know janky. The PSVR is super janky.
01:47:13 ◼ ► You know it's janky in so many ways like half of the hardware is old hardware that they repurposed
01:47:20 ◼ ► you know like the move controller and the camera they had those for different things like oh this
01:47:24 ◼ ► could kind of work. Except for the headset all of the other components were not built with VR as the
01:47:31 ◼ ► focus and it suffers from that where the Oculus products are built that way. I have the original
01:47:39 ◼ ► Oculus Quest and it is the best VR experience that I've ever had because it's freeing because
01:47:45 ◼ ► you're not tethered you know it's very and you can do whatever you want which is great. Like my you
01:47:51 ◼ ► know I have a PC in my office at home and I have an Oculus Rift but I didn't have a lot of space
01:47:57 ◼ ► there's nothing I can do about it and the Quest we can play in the living room where we have the space
01:48:01 ◼ ► and it's fantastic so I endorse the Quest as a product. Yes I know that Facebook own Oculus.
01:48:08 ◼ ► Yeah I don't want to hear it I don't love it but I also as Marco got one too and he was saying he
01:48:13 ◼ ► said yeah I know Facebook sucks also I'm on Instagram and I'm not leaving there and that's
01:48:16 ◼ ► owned by Facebook so you pick and choose what you want to do with with Facebook and I basically
01:48:21 ◼ ► don't use Facebook but I do use Instagram and I use WhatsApp. Oculus is good. Yeah I don't use
01:48:27 ◼ ► Facebook and if people want to be like no Facebook in my life that's fine. It's you man. I have
01:48:32 ◼ ► decided I've decided that I'm not going to draw the line at this product or at Instagram for that
01:48:39 ◼ ► matter that's fine. For me PlayStation 5. Yeah it's very very good. You can find one sure.
01:48:46 ◼ ► If you yeah if you can get one good for you I do have one and I love it and I got the 48 inch LG
01:49:04 ◼ ► too big for my space from where we watch TV we'll be too close. We tried it we got like a 50
01:49:10 ◼ ► something inch LG TV but too close. The 48 inch LG OLED perfect for our space. I absolutely love
01:49:19 ◼ ► this TV and it's the perfect pairing for my PlayStation 5. Super good. Like even like even
01:49:27 ◼ ► the speakers of the television are really good like in a way that I've not seen from a TV before.
01:49:32 ◼ ► I know it's never as good as having a sound system but it really does have great sound coming from
01:49:39 ◼ ► the TV which is great because that's how I play my games right. Like I use the HomePod for when
01:49:43 ◼ ► watching stuff on Apple TV but I can't play my Switch or PlayStation with that. Sounds great.
01:49:49 ◼ ► I really love it. I like the LG TV UI. I don't use it very much but it's great. I love that I have
01:49:54 ◼ ► it's in HomeKit so I can turn my TV on and off and change my inputs on my iPhone. Love it. Fantastic.
01:50:02 ◼ ► Really great. All right so picking the winner for this I think PlayStation 5 has got to be in the
01:50:09 ◼ ► mix. Yeah. I mean you love it and the upgradians love it and I have no opinion and I don't need to
01:50:17 ◼ ► pick a VR headset or a Roomba so I'm okay with just giving it to the PlayStation 5. Let's go.
01:50:23 ◼ ► PlayStation 5 is the winner with Oculus Quest 2 and Myke's TV and the 48-inch LG OLED TV.
01:50:38 ◼ ► always get to be runners-up in the upgradies. It's the law now. 2018 Jason's 4k HDR TV. That was
01:50:45 ◼ ► the winner in my document. Right. It's a great TV. Like the LG OLED TVs are great and I'm so pleased
01:50:53 ◼ ► that they created something for people that don't have big rooms. It's a great product. Now we move
01:50:59 ◼ ► into worst gadget or most disappointing technology of 2020. The mean awards. The mean awards. This is
01:51:06 ◼ ► an interesting one Jason. So we have a 4.7% 5G. I get it. Yep. 5.6%. The MagSafe Duo charger.
01:51:22 ◼ ► Now I was not expecting MagSafe to be here. Now I can imagine it's maybe people carrying over
01:51:34 ◼ ► the frustration of the removal of chargers which is part of what's going on here. I don't think
01:51:41 ◼ ► that like MagSafe is disappointing as a technology. The MagSafe Duo which is the little case thing.
01:51:52 ◼ ► My problem with it being here is I struggle with products in this category if people have never
01:52:02 ◼ ► used them. Right. I mean the reputation for that product is not great but very few people have
01:52:07 ◼ ► actually used it. And that's the thing like our friend Federico loves it but Federico's situation
01:52:14 ◼ ► means it works great for him. So he has a metal nightstand so it magnetically attaches. So like
01:52:18 ◼ ► Federico's in best case scenario for that. But I struggle with that to say like oh that is the
01:52:26 ◼ ► worst gadget of the year because it's not a gadget that people I think have used in the numbers that
01:52:33 ◼ ► voted for it. Genuinely I'm very surprised that MagSafe was at the top of the upgradience list.
01:52:40 ◼ ► Do you share my surprise? Yes I don't understand why. I have the MagSafe charging puck. I like it.
01:52:54 ◼ ► But so there are parts that are bad right. The cable is too short. That's annoying right.
01:53:10 ◼ ► That's right. That's why we love them. But they voted high on it. But what are your disappointments?
01:53:19 ◼ ► AirPods Max case. Which again I haven't used but people seem to hate it. You know I don't hate it.
01:53:53 ◼ ► going to promote. One of them is in the list which is 5G. I think this was the year that iPhone users
01:54:00 ◼ ► got to see what a marketing scam 5G is. And is it disappointing and bad? I don't know. Maybe.
01:54:13 ◼ ► Depends on how you want to argue it. But the fact that 5G is sort of a scheme to get people to pay
01:54:19 ◼ ► more on their phone bills and has been sold by the entire wireless industry is this thing you've got
01:54:24 ◼ ► to have that doesn't actually have benefit to most users because the 5G speeds aren't that great.
01:54:30 ◼ ► And the places where the 5G speeds are great are essentially like Wi-Fi hotspots. They're very small
01:54:34 ◼ ► and 5G will be necessary over time. But at present I would say 5G is disappointing. There might be a
01:54:40 ◼ ► better category for 5G marketing than this but there it is. And then the other one that I came
01:54:45 ◼ ► up with which I know is near and dear to your heart too is the ability to run iOS apps on Apple
01:54:51 ◼ ► Silicon Max which was mentioned in June, briefly mentioned when it rolled out, not really emphasized
01:55:05 ◼ ► by Apple PR and then when we all started using it discovered why which is it's kind of half-baked
01:55:11 ◼ ► and most of the apps you want to use aren't in the store. So it was a super disappointment and
01:55:18 ◼ ► probably my biggest disappointment in tech this year personally because I thought this was going
01:55:24 ◼ ► to be huge and it's a technical failure and also a store supply failure because everybody seems to
01:55:32 ◼ ► have opted out. Yeah it's like I think as we spoke about it at the time there are many applications
01:55:38 ◼ ► that I know would run great but the developers just don't want to put them in the store and I
01:55:42 ◼ ► find that disappointing. And I know that there are some apps that just don't run very well because
01:55:46 ◼ ► Apple support isn't very good but you know I've used enough of these apps to know the ones that
01:55:52 ◼ ► do or don't work and this has been a major disappointment for me this year like you said
01:55:59 ◼ ► on all fronts from the technology that's available to the take-up of it because I really thought that
01:56:04 ◼ ► this was going to be like absolutely transformative for the Mac. One of the apps I really wanted to
01:56:09 ◼ ► have running on my MacBook Air, one of these iOS apps is from my cable company and it's the ability
01:56:15 ◼ ► to watch basically live TV and put it in and they have a website that'll do it but the website is
01:56:20 ◼ ► very bad and I wanted to be able to put it in picture in picture and all that. I was very
01:56:24 ◼ ► excited to discover yesterday that something happened either the 11.1 update or an app update
01:56:29 ◼ ► where all of a sudden it works. It didn't work before it launched but it sort of didn't do
01:56:33 ◼ ► anything and then it started to work and I was very excited and I sent a note in Slack to you
01:56:38 ◼ ► and Steve and I was like "hey finally some good news about the iOS apps on Mac front" and then I
01:56:44 ◼ ► looked in the app store and guess what since I downloaded it it has been removed from the app
01:56:50 ◼ ► store so no one else will be able to take advantage of this app that I can use because they've removed
01:56:55 ◼ ► it because of course they have. I think iOS apps on M1 Macs is going to be the winner of this.
01:57:01 ◼ ► I think it does. I think it does. I want to put 5G in for sure as a runner-up. I don't want to put
01:57:09 ◼ ► MagSafe in personally. Don't want to do that. Let's just leave it there. Let's leave it there.
01:57:14 ◼ ► Most life-changing hardware. The Upgradients voted with 8.3% for the Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro.
01:57:22 ◼ ► 9.8% was AirPods Pro so a lot of Upgradients got AirPods Pro in 2020 and at 10.9% Apple Watch.
01:57:33 ◼ ► Fascinating. The Apple Watch always scores highly in this category and I understand why. Like if
01:57:40 ◼ ► you've just gotten an Apple Watch and you're new to the Apple Watch and there are a lot of people
01:57:43 ◼ ► new to the Apple Watch it will have a big impact on your life. I just wasn't expecting it again to
01:57:51 ◼ ► be uh to not just be in the running but to win the category. Yeah it's uh it's a perennial right?
01:58:08 ◼ ► my most life-changing hardware this year because it's gotten me to actually start running and stick
01:58:11 ◼ ► with running and run a couple of 5Ks and stuff like that. That's mostly because I can do it
01:58:16 ◼ ► the way I want using the Apple Watch and the fitness app and tracking and having it remind
01:58:21 ◼ ► me and stuff like that. That happened a few years ago for me but I get that for different people you
01:58:27 ◼ ► could you could phrase it different ways. I have a nominee here and it's something that we talked
01:58:31 ◼ ► about earlier which is the Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro and iPadOS cursor support together.
01:58:36 ◼ ► Really did change my favorite piece of hardware which is my iPad Pro for the better and I um
01:58:44 ◼ ► going into 2020 I would never have believed what happened in the spring. Not talking about
01:58:52 ◼ ► the pandemic talking about cursor support added to iPadOS and this first party keyboard with
01:58:58 ◼ ► trackpad for iPad designed for iPad. That's uh it was amazing and I still use it all the time
01:59:03 ◼ ► and I love it so for me that's the uh I agree with the 8.3% of upgradients of the Magic Keyboard.
01:59:10 ◼ ► Magic Keyboard's gonna win this category but I have a personal pick which is a big thing in my
01:59:17 ◼ ► life this year has been building custom mechanical keyboards. It's become my new hobby it's an
01:59:21 ◼ ► interest that I absolutely love. It's been my COVID hobby right? Lots of people have had one
01:59:27 ◼ ► this has become mine and it was really sparked by my first kind of entry in this world like at the
01:59:36 ◼ ► custom mechanical keyboard like the the luxury keyboard world as it were which is a keyboard
01:59:42 ◼ ► called the U80 by a company called Rama. It is absolutely wonderful uh I use this keyboard nearly
01:59:50 ◼ ► every day um still and I absolutely adore it. I love the design I love how it feels to use um
01:59:58 ◼ ► it's an absolute beast it's so heavy because there's this huge brass weight in the back of it
02:00:03 ◼ ► it really is just a superb product wonderfully made and I adore it so it's just a personal
02:00:10 ◼ ► thing here because it you know this this hobby has changed a part of my life this year it's
02:00:16 ◼ ► given me entertainment and interest and intrigue in a time which has been challenging um and this
02:00:22 ◼ ► one was definitely the one that really kind of set off for me. So we will go with Magic Keyboard
02:00:37 ◼ ► I would say your keyboard and the Apple Watch. I think so yeah see because just with the Magic
02:00:48 ◼ ► it really changed what it meant to use an iPad and it's gotten even better by the fact that it's not
02:00:57 ◼ ► just for iPad Pro anymore right the iPad Air 4 also can use this product which is fantastic
02:01:04 ◼ ► because it really does fundamentally change how you use the iPad in excellent ways and especially
02:01:16 ◼ ► This episode is brought to you by DoorDash. You have so much on your to-do list. Laundry, emails,
02:01:25 ◼ ► errands, who knows what else. Give yourself one less thing to worry about by letting DoorDash
02:01:29 ◼ ► take care of your next meal. DoorDash is the app that brings you food you're craving right now
02:01:34 ◼ ► right to your door. Ordering is easy you just open the DoorDash app choose what you want to eat
02:01:40 ◼ ► and your food will be left safely outside your door with their new contactless delivery drop-off setting.
02:01:45 ◼ ► With over 300,000 partners in the US, Puerto Rico, Canada and Australia you can support your local
02:01:52 ◼ ► go-to's or choose from your favorite national restaurants as well like Chipotle, Wendy's or
02:01:59 ◼ ► the Cheesecake Factory. Chipotle or I said Chipotle I don't like that Chipotle, Wendy's or the
02:02:05 ◼ ► Cheesecake Factory. Jason can you tell me a little bit about your use of DoorDash? Chipotle was my
02:02:10 ◼ ► favorite character on Star Trek Voyager. Anyway, the that's deep cut Star Trek nerds know what I'm
02:02:17 ◼ ► talking about so New Year's Eve coming up and I want to tell you a little story which is that
02:02:23 ◼ ► Christmas Eve I made dinner and we had like a bunch of sides and stuff and then we did it again
02:02:29 ◼ ► for Christmas day and Lauren and I were walking yesterday and I said I don't want to do that again
02:02:35 ◼ ► that was too much work. So for New Year's Eve we're going to order in and I'm going to place
02:02:42 ◼ ► that order in advance I'm going to market for when we wanted to deliver and we're going to have our
02:02:46 ◼ ► local Indian restaurant I think we're going to do Indian we're going to have it it brought to us
02:02:51 ◼ ► at the time we specify on New Year's Eve and we're going to have our family meal at home we're not
02:02:56 ◼ ► going to even we'd stay in our PJ's if we want to and they'll bring the food to us so DoorDash
02:03:01 ◼ ► lets you do that it's pretty great. Right now listeners of this show can get five dollars off
02:03:06 ◼ ► and zero delivery fees on their first order of fifteen dollars or more which is super easy if
02:03:11 ◼ ► you're doing the New Year's Eve thing like Jason. When you download the DoorDash app from the App
02:03:15 ◼ ► Store and enter the code to upgrade you will get that five dollars off and zero delivery fees on
02:03:19 ◼ ► your first order just go to the App Store download the DoorDash app and use the code to upgrade
02:03:24 ◼ ► that is one last time UPGRADE for five dollars off your first order with DoorDash go download it
02:03:31 ◼ ► now and thanks to DoorDash for their support of this show and Relay FM. Jason we are coming up to
02:03:52 ◼ ► So we go for favourite tech story of the year now there's also a particularly difficult one to
02:03:59 ◼ ► do the grading for because people just write sentences. Ideas, sitting in your ideas. It's
02:04:05 ◼ ► a tricky one however I was able to coalesce the answers together at 3.1 percent of the votes is
02:04:13 ◼ ► the Apple and Google exposure notification system which was a favourite story of people for this
02:04:19 ◼ ► year 11.5 percent is quote "App Store controversy" this includes Hey, Epic, Fortnite and many of the
02:04:30 ◼ ► other App Store related issues that there's been throughout this year and but with 44.3 percent
02:04:37 ◼ ► the transition to Apple Silicon and the M1 Max. Yeah so I put two two stories down and sometimes
02:04:46 ◼ ► I look further afield from Apple but in this case I'm going to stick with Apple for 2020 because
02:04:51 ◼ ► I want to do that and these are I think fun stories. The Apple Silicon transition is absolutely
02:04:57 ◼ ► on my list because this was the year that it happened they announced it and they made it
02:05:01 ◼ ► happen will continue but like this is the year that it happened so that's a great choice good
02:05:05 ◼ ► job many upgradees who chose it. The other one I'll throw in there is iOS customization something
02:05:14 ◼ ► that we've talked about a lot the idea that with iOS 14 you had the ability to build these widgets
02:05:20 ◼ ► and it led to this wild and some changes to shortcuts and we ended up in this wild place where
02:05:25 ◼ ► there was a huge trend this fall toward people customizing their iPhones especially the icons
02:05:33 ◼ ► the widgets the whole thing and that pent up user desire to make their devices their own that is you
02:05:42 ◼ ► know not new people have wanted to personalize their devices for decades now but it finally they
02:05:49 ◼ ► had the tools to do it and they did so I think that's a big story for this year too. Yeah I will
02:05:57 ◼ ► also say Apple Silicon transition has been fascinating and is setting up for what I'm sure
02:06:03 ◼ ► to be is a very interesting 2021. I personally have really enjoyed the comings and goings
02:06:12 ◼ ► of all of the App Store controversies this year. Oh boy enjoy is a strong word for it. What I mean
02:06:17 ◼ ► by enjoy is like I found it fascinating I found the back and forward fascinating all of the stuff
02:06:26 ◼ ► that it dredged up like these emails from Apple executives to each other and there's just I think
02:06:34 ◼ ► there's been a lot of intrigue in it and as a person who finds the comings and goings and machinations
02:06:42 ◼ ► of big companies interesting this has been like catnip for me this year really this story and
02:06:50 ◼ ► again not going away but I think we've seen a lot of the fireworks already and then I have also loved
02:06:58 ◼ ► the iOS customization stuff but also coupling that with Widgetsmith you know seeing the rise of that
02:07:05 ◼ ► application and being able to stand by and watch one of my closest friends go through all of that
02:07:11 ◼ ► was kind of incredible to me so I couldn't not include it here. Yes. I think it's very easy to
02:07:27 ◼ ► controversy as the runner's up I think that seems pretty cut and dry to me and I should disagree in
02:07:32 ◼ ► any way. I agree completely. Cool and look the Apple Silicon transition I think was always going
02:07:40 ◼ ► to be interesting right like however it happened good or bad or even if it was just oh look this
02:07:46 ◼ ► was easy and everything's the same but we all got a lot more I think than we were expecting from this
02:07:52 ◼ ► right like the the products and the way it was all done really just absolutely fascinating and
02:07:59 ◼ ► really fun to talk about. So now we move into our favorite tech screw-up of the year so there's some
02:08:08 ◼ ► interesting ones in here 7.8% is Cyberpunk 2077's terrible launch this one unbelievable uh honestly
02:08:19 ◼ ► too much for me to even try and summarize but this is a video game it's been waiting for a long time
02:08:25 ◼ ► delayed delayed delayed delayed came out was okay but buggy on PC absolutely abysmal on many
02:08:34 ◼ ► consoles then it turned out that there was like the the reviews were much better than the game
02:08:41 ◼ ► would seem to indicate because all of the reviewers only got uh PC review codes nobody got to see it
02:08:48 ◼ ► on consoles and see how bad it was and then the footage and stuff that was being shared seemed to
02:08:53 ◼ ► from the developer seemed to be um not console away from running on the consoles and then the
02:09:02 ◼ ► next-gen console patch and like version got delayed again and there was a lot of crunch at the
02:09:08 ◼ ► development studio and lots of reports of people being working for so much time then the developer
02:09:14 ◼ ► i'm trying to customize i'm trying to summarize it here that then the developer said basically
02:09:19 ◼ ► for playstation uh owners if you want to refund fine ask sony sony seemed to not have agreed to
02:09:26 ◼ ► that and ended up just pulling the app from the store and refunding everyone absolutely bananas
02:09:32 ◼ ► now there's like a class action lawsuit from the investors in the company cd project red huge story
02:09:38 ◼ ► big disappointment for a lot of people including me i was really looking forward to this game
02:09:42 ◼ ► but i've decided to just leave it for now maybe i'll come back to it at some point when it's
02:09:53 ◼ ► controversy that i think i've ever seen 9.9 is the app store controversy so everything surrounding
02:10:00 ◼ ► hay and epic that we were talking about earlier um it's considered by our gradients to be screw-ups
02:10:06 ◼ ► on all sides i think uh probably yeah i interpret this at least personally i interpret this as that
02:10:14 ◼ ► this is um on the all sides is a good way to put it that apple is partly responsible for the screw-up
02:10:19 ◼ ► here because apple um has i would say madly responsible yeah you're no i think you're right
02:10:25 ◼ ► i think this is really an own goal on apple's part that they could have avoided this controversy
02:10:29 ◼ ► if they had wanted to and it feels like they left it for a long time yeah and only now are attempting
02:10:35 ◼ ► to evade and avoid this controversy when they could have done it sooner but they were stubborn
02:10:40 ◼ ► and uh while i had a lot of criticism for hay and epic and other places this bottom line is that
02:10:48 ◼ ► apple is being scrutinized by powerful forces like governments and you know important regulators
02:10:55 ◼ ► and they could have avoided so much of this and instead they just sort of walked right into it and
02:11:09 ◼ ► yeah yeah because like you know i would say is their job to avoid this as the as the runners of
02:11:22 ◼ ► also 22.2 from the upgradients quibi you know it's a great choice yeah that is a spectacular
02:11:35 ◼ ► screw-up quibi the whole yes quibi yep just terrible i mean we saw it coming we knew it
02:11:47 ◼ ► would happen i think we did an episode where maybe it was an ask upgrade question there was
02:11:54 ◼ ► a question about quibi and and it was like does quibi have any chance and it was just launched
02:12:00 ◼ ► and i think the answer we gave was no no no it's a disaster it's it's it's a it's gonna be a disaster
02:12:07 ◼ ► and it was a disaster and don't let uh anybody tell you that it was the pandemic it wasn't the
02:12:14 ◼ ► pandemic it was that it was a bad idea yeah it was always a bad idea it was a bad idea when we
02:12:19 ◼ ► first heard about it like yep i'm sure the pandemic didn't help but you know i i love the thing i've
02:12:25 ◼ ► heard bed thompson say many times and i put it here it's like the pandemic just accelerated
02:12:29 ◼ ► things that were already in motion quibi was not going to work it just wasn't um and maybe it died
02:12:35 ◼ ► faster because of the pandemic like maybe they would have been able to get more investment but
02:12:41 ◼ ► then maybe people called on them because it was maybe a bad time to invest i don't know but
02:12:47 ◼ ► absolute screw-up what are your votes here quibi is a great one um and i'll throw in a couple others
02:12:55 ◼ ► are these screw-ups i don't know um 5g conspiracy theories okay yeah i don't know if that's a tech
02:13:06 ◼ ► screw-up or not i mean 5g i've already expressed that my skepticism about 5g in general but some
02:13:12 ◼ ► people express their skepticism about 5g and being convinced that it's like mind control
02:13:16 ◼ ► anyway that was that was an interesting story and then related to that also there are people
02:13:24 ◼ ► who believe that all wireless devices are are used for mind control and my favorite story perhaps of
02:13:32 ◼ ► the year uh about this is people who bought uh you can buy on amazon faraday cages for your wi-fi
02:13:38 ◼ ► routers which will block the signal from them which is amazing because they're not useful if
02:13:45 ◼ ► you block the signal i don't understand what you'd use like what i don't just don't plug it in
02:13:53 ◼ ► yeah but is is people is the story that people don't understand technology and blame it for all
02:14:01 ◼ ► their ills a tech screw-up or not i don't know i don't think so quibi is right down the middle as
02:14:07 ◼ ► a tech screw-up so i'll just throw i just wanted to mention those other stories i i would say we
02:14:11 ◼ ► we go with quibi as the screw-up uh and then again app store controversies and cyberpunk
02:14:19 ◼ ► yeah in there because that works for me that's what a year point one is a is kind of incredible
02:14:24 ◼ ► what a year yeah but quibi man my word just bravo to you all right here we go podcast time
02:14:34 ◼ ► favorite tech podcast i hate this category i hate these categories you know why i hate them because
02:14:39 ◼ ► i don't listen to podcasts as much anymore because i don't have a commute and it's it's very hard
02:14:50 ◼ ► when we started these categories and so it's painful it's painful because i just i don't
02:14:54 ◼ ► have as much to contribute i'm not out there trying a bunch of different podcasts well that's
02:15:02 ◼ ► for these categories because i've actually consumed new shows for a couple of the categories
02:15:10 ◼ ► because there are new shows and they're easy picks for me um in in these categories so the
02:15:16 ◼ ► upgradians 7.7 of the vote for favorite tech podcast goes to the talk show with john Gruber
02:15:23 ◼ ► 13.6 is upgrade which again i will only assume here jason you know i think it's easy to assume
02:15:31 ◼ ► the upgradians just think they can't vote for upgrade and i don't know this continues a
02:15:37 ◼ ► delightful trend where upgradians never pick upgrade as their favorite tech podcast but
02:15:46 ◼ ► muses me to no end 25.6 uh goes to connected which is another show that i host here at relay fm
02:15:53 ◼ ► well well that's the one with all the japes right all that all the ludicrousness runner-up last year
02:16:01 ◼ ► runner-up 2017 winner in 2018 and of course atp not allowed in this category because it won
02:16:09 ◼ ► every time uh i have three that i wanted to mention so more techs which is i which is cortex
02:16:16 ◼ ► with more stuff in it i i listen to that it is not every episode thank you but i i enjoy it for the
02:16:23 ◼ ► sake of voting um if a show has a member show which is a different you just rolled it into
02:16:30 ◼ ► cortex that's fine i'm just saying i listen to more text thank you um i also listen to connected
02:16:38 ◼ ► again not every episode i don't have the time but a lot and i also listen live sometimes which is
02:16:42 ◼ ► also fun and you guys have a uh a great rapport you've had it since you started um you're all
02:16:55 ◼ ► a little bit exaggerated sure the for the fun of it for the japes yes exactly even yes even
02:17:02 ◼ ► fedorico he's not quite that wacky in real life but close um it works really well it is a very
02:17:11 ◼ ► funny uh podcast like i i think if i if somebody said i want to listen to tech podcasts but they
02:17:17 ◼ ► have to be funny i'd say well you want the rebound and connected those of them those are your your
02:17:23 ◼ ► kind of zany apple themed podcasts it's like a different type of entertainment it is yeah it is
02:17:31 ◼ ► and although we have fun here we have fun here but it is different um and not not as wacky we're not
02:17:38 ◼ ► as wacky as connected is so i like i enjoy connected because of the that dynamic um and
02:17:43 ◼ ► all of the ridiculous things that you guys do on there it's great you took like you could have just
02:17:46 ◼ ► stolen the draft from us but you didn't instead you made a bizarre byzantine rules-based competition
02:17:55 ◼ ► some of which the rules don't even matter and it doesn't uh anyway in a couple of weeks i know
02:18:03 ◼ ► and then um and and the one tech podcast that i picked up this uh this year is dithering the
02:18:09 ◼ ► subscription only podcast well i mean all podcasts are subscriptions but you have to pay for it from
02:18:14 ◼ ► ben thompson and john grouper 15 minutes three times a week and i've really enjoyed that and
02:18:18 ◼ ► also 15 minutes is about how as long as i can uh that that's my uh that's my shower podcast i can
02:18:24 ◼ ► i can listen to that while i'm in the shower and get my quick download of tech stuff and then move
02:18:29 ◼ ► on because i have too many podcasts in my queue uh my favorite tech podcast that this year is dithering
02:18:37 ◼ ► um now i will just say we're going to talk about 20 max later for a good reason but i love dithering
02:18:47 ◼ ► um my favorite episodes of the talk show were always the ones with ben thompson because i like
02:18:53 ◼ ► the balance that they bring of technology and business plus they disagree a lot which i like
02:19:01 ◼ ► and i also enjoy that my opinions change between the two of them so it's always interesting because
02:19:08 ◼ ► i'm sometimes on one side of the argument one sometimes on side of the other i do also really
02:19:13 ◼ ► love that it's 15 minutes and it's three times a week it's like perfect little like making coffee
02:19:18 ◼ ► doing the washing up taking a shower that type of thing i think it's a genius idea excellently
02:19:23 ◼ ► executed yes i love it like i really really love it so as somebody who edited clockwise
02:19:30 ◼ ► every episode of clockwise for like i don't know 150 episodes 200 episodes i don't know when i
02:19:35 ◼ ► stopped doing clockwise but that's a 30-minute show and although we would we would underrun
02:19:41 ◼ ► we couldn't overrun and dithering is 15 minutes not a second less or more and so one of the things
02:19:49 ◼ ► i really enjoy and jim metzendorf i believe edits that podcast who edits some relay shows and some
02:19:55 ◼ ► incomparable shows um i enjoy it also because i can tell how i love seeing how jim has to fill
02:20:04 ◼ ► the time to get it to 15 by having that sometimes that stopwatch clicks for a long time folks
02:20:10 ◼ ► i love it it's hilarious because it's really hard to hit it right on the dot and um and he does it
02:20:17 ◼ ► but sometimes you you the clock goes on a long time and it makes me laugh so yeah i i think it's
02:20:22 ◼ ► a great newcomer but also a great tech podcast and i i'd be happy with it winning it's not in
02:20:28 ◼ ► the upgradians picks it appears later on uh which is interesting i'm not going to petition for
02:20:35 ◼ ► connected to win which will upset steven look i'm so thankful that the upgradians over a quarter of
02:20:43 ◼ ► them voted for connected i love that right and look i understand it because i listen to shows
02:20:48 ◼ ► like connected uh if you like connected you really like it because it's that kind of show right yeah
02:20:54 ◼ ► like you're in it and you love it but i'm i cannot give myself an award i just can't do it like i i
02:21:01 ◼ ► would i want to win awards who doesn't but i don't want to give them to myself so if i does that mean
02:21:07 ◼ ► that you shouldn't have you have you ever gotten uh an upgradey yeah i think you have yeah connected
02:21:13 ◼ ► has won right so i insisted on it and then it's a gentlemanly thing i'm like no no after you yeah
02:21:19 ◼ ► and i allowed and i sort of bestowed it upon you but you're not going to bestow it upon yourself
02:21:23 ◼ ► no okay well in this case though i think i think dithering is the answer i think dithering should
02:21:29 ◼ ► win it's true like there aren't many shows where i think to myself oh is today the day yeah and
02:21:40 ◼ ► that is one where i think about i'm like oh is today a dithering day and those don't those don't
02:21:44 ◼ ► queue up for no i'm listening to them immediately i listen every single day i listen to them this
02:21:49 ◼ ► is the same actually with the trajectory daily podcast which is another one that i picked up to
02:21:53 ◼ ► see that i love all right and uh for runners-up i'm gonna say connected and and upgrade because
02:22:00 ◼ ► give ourselves a runner-up always the bridesmaid well we can't we've set we've established that
02:22:08 ◼ ► one of us can give an award to the other one but we can't give it to ourselves no and unless like
02:22:12 ◼ ► steven breaks into the upgradees to give us an award so here's the conditional set upgrade needs
02:22:18 ◼ ► to get over 90 of the upgradians vote for us to give ourselves the award all right there we go
02:22:23 ◼ ► precedent has been set last two awards campaigning for the 2021 upgradees has begun already for your
02:22:30 ◼ ► consideration favorite non-tech podcast the upgradians voted this one's wild this is like
02:22:37 ◼ ► the books one where it's just like here is 1500 different shows uh 3.7 of the vote goes to
02:22:45 ◼ ► reconcilable differences four percent of the vote goes to dubai friday and 4.5 of the vote goes to
02:22:52 ◼ ► cortex wow this is a hard one as well because again i don't listen to that many podcasts and
02:22:58 ◼ ► my podcast that i listen to all the time it's in the hall of fame so the flophouse yes so that
02:23:06 ◼ ► leaves me i'll list some i've mentioned some of these in past upgradees the podcast with mike
02:23:10 ◼ ► shur and joe paznanski um 13 minutes to the moon which is a bbc podcast that was originally
02:23:27 ◼ ► podcasts that i don't listen to every episode but i do listen sporadically when i have the time
02:23:33 ◼ ► and is delightful and we know those guys and i want to mention dan moran's podcast a complicated
02:23:39 ◼ ► profession about the mandalorian episode by episode um over on the incomparable i i listened
02:23:45 ◼ ► to every episode of that too and really enjoyed dan and his guests and he had a different guest
02:23:49 ◼ ► every time um breaking down what happened in the mandalorian and that is a sign of a show that i
02:23:54 ◼ ► really like that i want to listen to the episode by episode breakdown as the um as the show's being
02:24:00 ◼ ► released uh for me my brother my brother and me i've got to give it another nod i love that show
02:24:08 ◼ ► um but for me also the besties you may remember the besties i've spoken about it on this show
02:24:15 ◼ ► before because it became a spotify original right it is no longer a spotify original interesting uh
02:24:23 ◼ ► from what i could piece together from what they said on the show spotify did not want to renew it
02:24:28 ◼ ► huh so this is answering a question of if you do not have a lot of listeners on spotify and
02:24:34 ◼ ► you're a spotify original they will get rid of you which is what it seems has happened here with the
02:24:40 ◼ ► besties they have now got the show back they moved the feed which is cool the feed got moved so
02:24:47 ◼ ► spotify will do that for you they're out on their own again they put all the old feeds all the
02:24:52 ◼ ► episodes back in the feed and now they're trying to build up their audience base again and one of
02:24:56 ◼ ► the things that i like that they said on the show and i think it's gonna be interesting is we're
02:24:59 ◼ ► gonna find out what happens to a listenership when you go exclusive and then don't so this is like
02:25:08 ◼ ► these questions we've been asking for as long as spotify have been doing this stuff is what happens
02:25:12 ◼ ► to a listenership if you were a podcast that people listen to then you went exclusive it goes
02:25:18 ◼ ► down and then how do you get it back again so i encourage people to go listen to the besties it
02:25:22 ◼ ► is video game podcast it's the best video game podcast i've ever listened to i adore it justin
02:25:28 ◼ ► and griffin mcelroy chris plant and uh russ frostick previously all at polygon the show
02:25:33 ◼ ► will start when they're at polygon and it is the idea of the what if the world's best friends played
02:25:39 ◼ ► the world's best games i love it it's just a superb show it's very funny very entertaining and uh
02:25:44 ◼ ► very cool i love it so that's uh i think this one's gonna be tricky what i will say you've got
02:26:11 ◼ ► comfort listening to merlin and john talk about how they're getting through the pandemic
02:26:19 ◼ ► i don't like listening to stories about john's toe i could do without those uh but aside from that
02:26:26 ◼ ► it's a great show and look i would i would give it the nod here jason it's not one before
02:26:32 ◼ ► let's do it reconcilable differences it was a previous uh runner-up and is the winner of
02:26:40 ◼ ► the favorite non-tech podcast this year um let's what do you want to go with for the runners-up i
02:26:46 ◼ ► would like to put the besties in here because do it and whichever uh a complicated profession
02:26:55 ◼ ► okay final award of the evening this one is for favorite podcast newcomer we've reached the end
02:27:06 ◼ ► you know so these award shows they tend to run long the upgradeions 5.6 percent to test drivers
02:27:12 ◼ ► which is a show that i hosted austin evans and i'm very thankful for that so thank you to everybody
02:27:16 ◼ ► that put that in there i wasn't expecting it i'm very thankful for it 11.1 of the vote goes to 20
02:27:29 ◼ ► completed today and if you're not it'll complete thursday that'll be this is the week this is
02:27:33 ◼ ► because you mike you see i've run out of 2020 yeah just in time huh see what i did there you really
02:27:38 ◼ ► got that one at some point i had to start because i was gonna run out of 2020 and that's in the name
02:27:43 ◼ ► of the show so this is the week we have to release the episode on thursday uh i do and in fact it is
02:27:53 ◼ ► coming out thursday because also i did that last week too because the holidays on the fridays so
02:27:57 ◼ ► i moved them to thursdays but it does get me in on on december 31st yeah yeah 16.1 percent goes to
02:28:05 ◼ ► dithering oh yes make sense stays here i understand why people put it here rather than your favorite
02:28:11 ◼ ► tech podcast because it's new but i think that show honestly for me i like it so much that it's
02:28:19 ◼ ► i wanted to honor it there plus okay my vote here is very simple it's very clear it's 20 max of 2020
02:28:27 ◼ ► and i think that it fits better in the newcomer because it's gone uh it's it's gone now it's not
02:28:33 ◼ ► gonna not gonna come back you genuinely put a year in it and that pretty much limits you have done
02:28:40 ◼ ► an absolutely outstanding job with this show like thank you when i say all that stuff i said about
02:28:49 ◼ ► dithering of where is dithering and as soon as it comes out i listen to it it's exactly the same for
02:28:55 ◼ ► 20 max this is not just because you're one of my closest friends because i don't feel this way about
02:29:01 ◼ ► every project that all of my friends have ever made right where it's like not just that i enjoy
02:29:06 ◼ ► it but that i enjoy it enough that i will stop listening to shows that i'm halfway through to
02:29:13 ◼ ► listen to the next episode of 20 max because you have created a audio documentary series
02:29:21 ◼ ► about the macintosh with excellent production values you have done some truly wild things in
02:29:28 ◼ ► tracking down old ceos of companies it's very well edited you know that's to the to work of you and
02:29:36 ◼ ► and brian as well for the help that brian's given you but i know that really you've you've brought
02:29:41 ◼ ► the story together right you've done an an absolutely excellent job with this thank you
02:29:52 ◼ ► thought it would be and uh i'm very happy with the result too i i absolutely am it was not part
02:29:57 ◼ ► of the original plan to even do it and i ended up doing it i got a um i got a mention that i'll
02:30:03 ◼ ► mention here there was a uh a site discover pods.com that named the 71 best podcasts of
02:30:08 ◼ ► 2020 it's interesting numbers 71 y71 but 20 max for 2020 is on there so well i'll take it
02:30:14 ◼ ► i'll take it seven top we're top 71 yeah i want it to win this yeah you won't give it to yourself
02:30:20 ◼ ► but i think 20 max 2020 strangely not too many minutes ago we we established that one of us can
02:30:27 ◼ ► give the other one an award and that that i have previously given you one so i think it's clear
02:30:33 ◼ ► that i will accept gratefully also i don't have anything else to put in this category no thank you
02:30:39 ◼ ► so 20 max for 2020 wins our favorite podcast newcomer of the year we have dithering and the
02:30:46 ◼ ► test drivers as our runners up and thus concludes the upgrade for 2020 look 2020 has been a tricky
02:30:55 ◼ ► year all right that's putting it lightly doesn't mean there hasn't been good things and i'm really
02:31:00 ◼ ► happy with the list of stuff that we've had here today because there's been lots of great content
02:31:04 ◼ ► there's been lots of great news and products and technology and i'm very pleased that we've been
02:31:10 ◼ ► able to assemble a list of these things for you here i would like to thank the many many many
02:31:16 ◼ ► upgradeans who voted in the upgrades this year and also everyone who has supported us this year by
02:31:23 ◼ ► listening to the show this is our final episode of 2020 we're going to be into next year which
02:31:28 ◼ ► i'm excited about into 2021 um i also want to give a extra special thanks as well to everyone that has
02:31:35 ◼ ► become a member and supported upgrade this year it's been uh we've really enjoyed uh putting
02:31:39 ◼ ► together upgrade plus and we thank you for your support yeah it's been a challenging year obviously
02:31:44 ◼ ► for everybody and uh one of the delightful things that has happened this year is that so many people
02:31:50 ◼ ► when we rolled out the new membership system so many people decided that they were going to
02:31:56 ◼ ► support upgrade directly and you know can't i think mike and i cannot be more grateful to you
02:32:01 ◼ ► for doing that we really do appreciate it and for everyone else you know the bottom line is you kept
02:32:05 ◼ ► listening and we thank you for listening because i think a lot of us didn't um have lost some of our
02:32:11 ◼ ► podcast listening time so we appreciate you continuing to listen to this show 332 episodes in
02:32:18 ◼ ► thank you to everyone who chooses to listen to upgrade we know that there are many podcast choices
02:32:24 ◼ ► out there many of them we mentioned and so thank you so much for listening to this show and uh
02:32:29 ◼ ► another year in the books but uh it was i think in terms of this podcast it was a good year and
02:32:35 ◼ ► very few things i could say that about but in terms of this podcast i think it was a good year
02:32:39 ◼ ► i would also like to thank simon buckmaster for his incredible work on the upgrade his artwork
02:32:46 ◼ ► this year and all of the artwork that he has created for this show over uh of course of our
02:32:51 ◼ ► time all of our wonderful chapter artwork simon has created for us and we're very thankful for him
02:32:57 ◼ ► uh zach knox for building upgradees.com where you can see the winners of every category of every
02:33:03 ◼ ► year um and also zach puts together our draft scoreboards and scorecards for us as well so
02:33:10 ◼ ► and also thank you to chris breen for creating the theme song for this episode and every other
02:33:15 ◼ ► theme that we have you know the the regular theme the summer fun theme all put together by chris
02:33:24 ◼ ► thank you so much for listening to the upgradees for 2020 we would like to wish you a very happy