Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:10 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, and of course these are the Upgradey Awards for 2019.

00:00:16 ◼   ► Today's show is brought to you by PDF-Pen from SMILE, Linode, Kensington, and Ethos.

00:00:22 ◼   ► We'll be talking about our sponsors of this fine prestigious awards event as we go through the proceedings of the evening.

00:00:28 ◼   ► My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by my co-chair in the Upgradey's Award Committee, Mr. Jason Snell. Hi, Jason Snell.

00:00:36 ◼   ► Does that mean we have to like share a single chair? Is that how that works?

00:00:40 ◼   ► One very big chair. It's like a love seat.

00:00:42 ◼   ► Okay, that's good. That's good. It's the sixth, Myke, sixth annual Upgradey's. How about that?

00:00:48 ◼   ► I'm pleased you said that because I can't.

00:00:49 ◼   ► Very quickly before we begin, thank you to everybody for the kind words about our last episode.

00:00:53 ◼   ► I'm really pleased that people enjoyed the holiday special as much as we enjoyed putting it together.

00:00:58 ◼   ► Both me and Jason worked very hard on that one, I think, and I'm really pleased that people liked it because you're never sure how people are going to react, right?

00:01:05 ◼   ► Yeah, I didn't know because it's like it starts out and it's kind of real, but then it becomes ludicrous as it goes and that's great.

00:01:14 ◼   ► Also, my condolences to the people who thought, "Oh, I much prefer this format. I'm glad that Upgradey is now just going to be serial every week," because it's not.

00:01:24 ◼   ► But thank you.

00:01:25 ◼   ► Who knows? Maybe in the future. We'll see.

00:01:27 ◼   ► I definitely know it's not going to be the case, but who knows? Maybe there'll be another one. We'll see.

00:01:31 ◼   ► But these are the Upgradey Awards. Let me explain to you some of the proceedings that we have going on today.

00:01:37 ◼   ► This is our sixth year in a row that we are doing the Upgradey's, which is a wonderful thing to think about and I'm very excited that we're here today because I enjoy the Upgradey's immensely.

00:01:48 ◼   ► If you want to see both the information about all of the previous winners and runner-ups in every category and links to the winners and runner-ups of this year's Upgradey's, go to Upgradey's.com. There'll be a link in the show notes for that.

00:02:03 ◼   ► We'll not be putting anything else in the show notes to avoid category spoilers.

00:02:07 ◼   ► Spoilers. Oh, yes. Yes. You wouldn't want to spoil your own podcast. That would be terrible.

00:02:11 ◼   ► Be wild. We will just at this point mention that there are two award winners that are in the Hall of Fame, both the Accidental Tech Podcast as the favorite tech podcast and the Flop House as the favorite non-tech podcast.

00:02:26 ◼   ► When an individual or company or podcast wins three total Upgradey's, they are put into the Hall of Fame so they can no longer win in that category.

00:02:37 ◼   ► This is to stop certain shows or items winning every single year forever.

00:02:42 ◼   ► And to help us with that, we now have been for the last few years opening up the Upgradey Awards to you, the Upgradients, so we can have more variety in our voting.

00:02:54 ◼   ► This was to stop, for example, there were certain categories that either me or Jason couldn't pick a different winner in, which keep picking the same thing all the time, or couldn't come up with many nominations for.

00:03:03 ◼   ► And there'll be some of those throughout the night where both me or Jason cannot think of something that we particularly would want to award because of reasons that we'll get to.

00:03:12 ◼   ► This is the third time that we've been taking nominations from the Upgradients and Jason, over 1,500 Upgradients responded this year, which is more than double last year, which is incredible.

00:03:25 ◼   ► So thank you to everybody that put their nominations in. I worked on this for many hours over the holiday break to bring together all of those nominations into some charts and then we could bring out some percentages.

00:03:37 ◼   ► So as we go through, we'll be doing a few things in every category.

00:03:41 ◼   ► So for each category, both me and Jason make a nomination and we look at the top three winners as denoted from the Upgradients votes.

00:03:49 ◼   ► We then use all of this information to discuss and choose a winner together.

00:03:54 ◼   ► You get to hear the discussions that are usually kind of held behind closed doors of award ceremony panels.

00:04:00 ◼   ► And just like if you listen to this show live and you see voting in the chat room where we'd vote for the titles of every episode, this is not a democracy around here.

00:04:08 ◼   ► We choose the winner based on what we think is right as opposed to necessarily what received the most votes.

00:04:16 ◼   ► So I guess without further ado, Jason, should we get into our very first category of the evening?

00:04:20 ◼   ► I think so. I did want to mention the Hall of Fame.

00:04:23 ◼   ► You went past that and dangled out there that if you get an upgrade three times, you're inducted into the Hall of Fame so we can stop picking you.

00:04:30 ◼   ► There are a few selections that could potentially be made this time that would put things in the Hall of Fame.

00:04:38 ◼   ► So it's very exciting because we don't know what's going to happen.

00:04:41 ◼   ► We have our choices, but we have to work it all out here.

00:04:45 ◼   ► That's happening live on the podcast.

00:04:48 ◼   ► But it's possible we could have some Hall of Fame inductees today, which is exciting too.

00:04:53 ◼   ► Although I do feel like it's basically a punishment for us for stop picking that.

00:04:58 ◼   ► We know you like it. Stop picking it.

00:04:59 ◼   ► Which I think is good.

00:05:00 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:05:01 ◼   ► The Hall of Fame, by the way, if you want to find it, if you go to the Upgrades Hall of Fame and you select to view by year at Upgrades.com, there is a lifetime achievement, which is put at the top there.

00:05:12 ◼   ► The reason it says lifetime achievement is because we very frequently flip between both phrases, both lifetime achievement and Hall of Fame.

00:05:19 ◼   ► So there you go.

00:05:20 ◼   ► Maybe we could change it to Hall of Fame, but it doesn't matter.

00:05:23 ◼   ► And if you want to visit the physical Hall of Fame, it doesn't exist.

00:05:26 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:05:26 ◼   ► Maybe one day.

00:05:27 ◼   ► Maybe one day.

00:05:28 ◼   ► Maybe one day.

00:05:28 ◼   ► It's a Stephen Hackett's house maybe.

00:05:30 ◼   ► Lifetime achievement is actually the better phrase and is the phrase that we will now use from here on out in the episode.

00:05:34 ◼   ► Lifetime achievement award winners, which are ATP and the Flop House.

00:05:38 ◼   ► Okay, so the very first category today is for the best iOS app.

00:05:45 ◼   ► So Jason, would you like to hear what the Upgradients entered as the best iOS apps of the year?

00:05:51 ◼   ► I would.

00:05:52 ◼   ► At 4.6% of the overall vote is Things.

00:05:56 ◼   ► I guess Things 3, which is the current version of the GTD focused application, 4.6% of the vote.

00:06:02 ◼   ► At 9.6% of the vote is Apollo, the Reddit client for iOS.

00:06:08 ◼   ► And at a huge 27.4%, I believe this is the single largest percentage of any award winner of the Upgradies, like voted for by the Upgradients this year.

00:06:22 ◼   ► Yes, I just checked.

00:06:23 ◼   ► Yeah, so 27.4% is Overcast, the podcast application that many people are probably listening to this episode in.

00:06:31 ◼   ► And that is one of the reasons why I think Overcast is so heavily picked by listeners.

00:06:38 ◼   ► So what you're saying is that podcast listeners like podcast apps.

00:06:41 ◼   ► Correct, that is what I think.

00:06:43 ◼   ► Interesting.

00:06:43 ◼   ► So that is 27.4% for Overcast.

00:06:46 ◼   ► And I will note, so you were saying about Lifetime Achievement Award winners, if Overcast is to win this category today, it will become a Lifetime Achievement Award winner,

00:06:59 ◼   ► as it won in both 2014 and 2013.

00:07:04 ◼   ► And last year, sorry, in 2018, my apologies, 2018 and 2014.

00:07:08 ◼   ► So that would put Marco Amat's Overcast as a Lifetime Achievement Award winner.

00:07:13 ◼   ► But we have many things to discuss before then, including your pick, Jason, for the best iOS app of the year.

00:07:19 ◼   ► Yeah, this I always struggle with this because there are, you know, there's so many iOS apps.

00:07:25 ◼   ► It's a very wide category.

00:07:28 ◼   ► And I use a bunch of them, but they're very personal.

00:07:31 ◼   ► And I try to think more broadly.

00:07:33 ◼   ► And I also try to not pick Overcast because I also use it all the time to listen to podcasts.

00:07:41 ◼   ► And it had some really nice upgrades this year that made it way better, that were really innovative.

00:07:48 ◼   ► The clip sharing feature that Marco introduced this year has gotten people to share podcast audio way more than they used to,

00:07:56 ◼   ► which is great for podcasts in general.

00:07:58 ◼   ► Other apps have picked up the concept.

00:08:00 ◼   ► So there's a lot to be said for it.

00:08:03 ◼   ► But I kept saying to myself, no, no, no, no, no, don't pick Overcast.

00:08:06 ◼   ► Come on, you gotta get something, you gotta find something else.

00:08:09 ◼   ► So in the course of writing my book about photos, which is available now, I guess, take control of photos,

00:08:21 ◼   ► the app, the iOS app that I kept coming back to, that it works.

00:08:28 ◼   ► It's exactly what I want on my iPad when I'm doing photo stuff, because although photos for iOS is good and getting better,

00:08:40 ◼   ► there are things that it is unable to do that are just perplexing.

00:08:45 ◼   ► And also there's this frustration about using third party apps for photos on iOS, where you end up,

00:08:54 ◼   ► in the past what it's been is you sort of end up with duplicates of everything.

00:08:57 ◼   ► So you can you can export a photo and then edit it somewhere else to get around the fact that it doesn't have good editing tools,

00:09:02 ◼   ► or it doesn't have some editing tools that you want.

00:09:04 ◼   ► But then you put it back in photos and it's just like a new photo at the end of the library,

00:09:09 ◼   ► nowhere near the other stuff and a duplicate.

00:09:12 ◼   ► Well, Apple did some changes to iOS to make it capable for third party apps to overwrite photos in the photo library.

00:09:20 ◼   ► So that's good.

00:09:21 ◼   ► And one app that I discovered does that and has a really good, really easy to use touch-up tool,

00:09:32 ◼   ► where basically if you have a blemish on a person or there's a beautiful background and there's some random person walking across it,

00:09:41 ◼   ► you literally open this app up and move your finger over that thing you want to remove and it's gone.

00:09:49 ◼   ► Plus there's machine learning driven auto adjust and so many other things.

00:09:53 ◼   ► So my nomination is going to be Pixelmator Photo for iPad as best iOS app,

00:09:58 ◼   ► because it lets me make my photos way better in my photo library on my iPad.

00:10:06 ◼   ► And when I started using it, I just could not believe.

00:10:11 ◼   ► It was one of those things where I'm looking around like, do people know about this?

00:10:14 ◼   ► And I looked and it's like, some people knew about it, a lot of people didn't know about it.

00:10:17 ◼   ► It's really amazing and does some stuff that the photos app just doesn't do,

00:10:23 ◼   ► but then saves the photos back in to the photo library, really good app.

00:10:28 ◼   ► So Pixelmator Photo is my nomination.

00:10:30 ◼   ► I like that pic.

00:10:31 ◼   ► It's a little bit out of left field, right?

00:10:34 ◼   ► I don't think it's something that everybody would use a lot or even the people that

00:10:38 ◼   ► do own it probably don't use it a ton, but I have saved photos using this application.

00:10:43 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

00:10:44 ◼   ► Right?

00:10:44 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

00:10:45 ◼   ► Photos that I really like, but would otherwise be ruined by something.

00:10:49 ◼   ► And I have done some wild things with the machine.

00:10:52 ◼   ► Like the machine learning to remove things in an image are so, so good.

00:10:57 ◼   ► It is very, very shocking how well it does.

00:11:01 ◼   ► And it's very good with the Apple pencil, like to draw over an element of the image

00:11:06 ◼   ► and watch it be deleted.

00:11:07 ◼   ► It's very, very cool.

00:11:08 ◼   ► So it's a great pic, Jason.

00:11:10 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:11:11 ◼   ► It's the one that blew me away was I had a picture of my wife and my daughter from our

00:11:18 ◼   ► trip to Hawaii this summer.

00:11:19 ◼   ► And they're in front of a waterfall at this little pond.

00:11:24 ◼   ► And there's like, you know, three or four random people at various points in the pond.

00:11:30 ◼   ► And I, in, you know, a minute with my finger, turned that into, um, them and just them at

00:11:39 ◼   ► a secluded pond with the, and it's like, that is so cool.

00:11:43 ◼   ► And I didn't, I mean, really, it was just like tracing over the people who I wanted

00:11:48 ◼   ► to remove and then they're gone.

00:11:49 ◼   ► So it's, it's pretty remarkable and yes, you can salvage photos that would otherwise

00:11:53 ◼   ► be unusual usable.

00:11:54 ◼   ► It's pretty amazing.

00:11:55 ◼   ► So why these features aren't in photos is a question for another time, but I'm so glad

00:12:00 ◼   ► that Pixelmator Photo exists.

00:12:01 ◼   ► My favorite iOS app of this year should be of no surprise to people who follow my work

00:12:09 ◼   ► in various places online.

00:12:11 ◼   ► It is the time tracking app called Timery.

00:12:13 ◼   ► So this is an iOS app for both iPad and iPad OS, I guess, and iOS.

00:12:20 ◼   ► We're keeping that by the way, iPad OS and iOS, it will still contained in this one category

00:12:26 ◼   ► because that just, I don't think aren't necessarily enough distinct applications.

00:12:31 ◼   ► Right.

00:12:32 ◼   ► But Timery is an application that works with the time tracking software or the time tracking

00:12:37 ◼   ► service, I should say toggle.

00:12:38 ◼   ► It's been in development.

00:12:40 ◼   ► It was in development for quite a while and it came out earlier this year.

00:12:42 ◼   ► It has just a very great design and it's very iOS-y.

00:12:48 ◼   ► It supports, you know, all the things that you would want your third party app to support.

00:12:52 ◼   ► Like, you know, when I say third party, like that community of like good third party apps.

00:12:55 ◼   ► So it has lots of themes and dark and like a great dark mode support and app icon choices

00:13:00 ◼   ► and all that kind of stuff.

00:13:01 ◼   ► The widget is fantastic.

00:13:03 ◼   ► It's this is how I mostly interact with Timery is by the widget.

00:13:07 ◼   ► You can set up a bunch of saved timers, you know, so like, for example, I have like recording,

00:13:13 ◼   ► upgrade, editing, upgrade.

00:13:15 ◼   ► Those are like saved in my Timery widget so I can just hit those with a button and it

00:13:18 ◼   ► starts straight away.

00:13:19 ◼   ► And the widget itself has a counter for your current timer so you can see that ticking

00:13:24 ◼   ► away.

00:13:25 ◼   ► The application also has fantastic shortcut support.

00:13:29 ◼   ► So all of my shortcuts that I have that integrate with time tracking in some way.

00:13:34 ◼   ► So when I work on anything, I have to keep my time tracked so I know where so I can have

00:13:37 ◼   ► like accurate representations of what I'm doing.

00:13:39 ◼   ► It's important to me with the way that I work.

00:13:41 ◼   ► But I replaced all of my shortcuts that integrate with time tracking anyway with shortcuts created

00:13:47 ◼   ► by Timery.

00:13:48 ◼   ► And I've been able to build some more powerful than I was able to before using shortcuts

00:13:53 ◼   ► and its support because it's so well done.

00:13:56 ◼   ► And it's been an application in really great consistent development throughout the entire

00:14:01 ◼   ► year.

00:14:02 ◼   ► The developer, Joe, does a wonderful job of integrating feedback from users and advancing

00:14:08 ◼   ► the application in a bunch of ways.

00:14:10 ◼   ► It's a subscription app.

00:14:12 ◼   ► It's very well priced and is an application that I use all day, every day.

00:14:17 ◼   ► When I'm working, Timery is running.

00:14:19 ◼   ► It's absolutely fantastic and I love it.

00:14:22 ◼   ► Like right now.

00:14:23 ◼   ► Right now I've got my podcast recording upgrade timer has been running for 25 minutes and

00:14:29 ◼   ► three seconds because that's how long we've been on the call today.

00:14:31 ◼   ► So now do you know, do you have it on the do you do stuff on the Mac with with toggle

00:14:38 ◼   ► too and use something different there or are you using iOS for all your control of toggle

00:14:42 ◼   ► on the Mac?

00:14:43 ◼   ► I have the toggle app, which is terrible.

00:14:48 ◼   ► But most of the time I will be firing off my timer on my iPhone using a shortcut that

00:14:55 ◼   ► I built, which it's I'm pretty proud of the shortcut.

00:14:58 ◼   ► It looks at my calendar and grabs the name of the show I'm recording and adds that in

00:15:03 ◼   ► as a tag in Timery with the Timery shortcuts and puts my phone on do not disturb.

00:15:09 ◼   ► So I'm still using Timery but via shortcuts as well as just the Timery app itself, because

00:15:16 ◼   ► that's the kind of power this app has.

00:15:17 ◼   ► It has the what are the new shortcuts in conversational shortcuts?

00:15:22 ◼   ► Is that it where you can you can add in loads of information into a shortcut with variables

00:15:26 ◼   ► and stuff that supports all of that.

00:15:28 ◼   ► It's really just just fantastic.

00:15:29 ◼   ► I love this app.

00:15:30 ◼   ► So we send an impasse, I guess, anything similar.

00:15:35 ◼   ► So I will say on overcast, I was thinking about like overcast being the upgrade ends

00:15:41 ◼   ► winner this year.

00:15:42 ◼   ► And I was thinking about the application myself.

00:15:44 ◼   ► Of course, it is my app of choice when it comes to podcasts.

00:15:48 ◼   ► One of the things that I thought about which really kind of solidifies overcast having

00:15:52 ◼   ► a good year, like a very good year this year is the clip sharing feature, which you mentioned

00:15:56 ◼   ► earlier.

00:15:57 ◼   ► Like that was a very, very clever feature implemented very well that I've now seen used

00:16:03 ◼   ► in a bunch of other podcast apps, which is like, you know, that's one of the key things

00:16:07 ◼   ► to show that you had a good feature is it starts to become a standard that you expect.

00:16:11 ◼   ► And what I would say is for that, like it was everywhere when the when this feature

00:16:17 ◼   ► debuted in the application.

00:16:18 ◼   ► And whilst the I would say the current amount of times the current usage I see of this feature

00:16:25 ◼   ► sort of sharing little clips and videos, it isn't as much as I would love it to be still

00:16:30 ◼   ► being used, but it's way more than I thought would still be used.

00:16:33 ◼   ► Does that make sense?

00:16:34 ◼   ► Like I'm still seeing them all the time.

00:16:36 ◼   ► I wish I saw them even more, but I'm still seeing them all the time.

00:16:41 ◼   ► So I will throw my hat in the ring for Overcast, because I do think that that feature this

00:16:47 ◼   ► year is very deserving of accolade.

00:16:51 ◼   ► Well, if we pick Overcast here, too, we have the advantage of putting it in the lifetime

00:16:55 ◼   ► achievement category, which would make Marco Arment the first ever two time lifetime achievement

00:17:01 ◼   ► award winner, which is also just an interesting thing because he is part of the Accidental

00:17:06 ◼   ► Tech podcast.

00:17:06 ◼   ► Yeah, that's true.

00:17:08 ◼   ► That's true.

00:17:09 ◼   ► Oh, boy.

00:17:10 ◼   ► Now we get the best part of the podcast where we have to decide things.

00:17:14 ◼   ► We got unfortunately, this is our last category, right?

00:17:17 ◼   ► I think it would be fine given that clip sharing feature and how important it is, I think,

00:17:29 ◼   ► to making podcasts more shareable.

00:17:30 ◼   ► And I use it all the time and I see people using it.

00:17:33 ◼   ► And it's a real innovation that benefited what we do and that we use ourselves.

00:17:43 ◼   ► And it lets us never pick Overcast in this category again.

00:17:48 ◼   ► Let's do it.

00:17:49 ◼   ► Yeah, I think it's good for if we have something that keeps coming up consistently to put it,

00:17:54 ◼   ► to award it, right?

00:17:55 ◼   ► Like people love it, we love it.

00:17:57 ◼   ► But now it opens the gate a bit more for other apps in the future to win this category.

00:18:02 ◼   ► So the 2019 Upgrady Award winner for best iOS app is Overcast.

00:18:09 ◼   ► Congratulations to Marco for a second lifetime achievement win.

00:18:13 ◼   ► I guess Marco has to keep working on more and more new things now to get into other categories,

00:18:18 ◼   ► maybe the Mac app.

00:18:18 ◼   ► And Overcast will now be placed at the Hall of Fame in Steven Hackett's house, might be

00:18:26 ◼   ► inside Steven Hackett's Mac Pro.

00:18:27 ◼   ► And Myke, I feel like for next year, something to aspire to is when we decide the winner

00:18:32 ◼   ► – I think we need like a gong or something.

00:18:35 ◼   ► Can you work on that?

00:18:36 ◼   ► Can you get a gong?

00:18:37 ◼   ► Like, you know, and the winner is Brong Overcast, right?

00:18:42 ◼   ► I mean, I can not only, I can get a real gong if you want to.

00:18:46 ◼   ► I can also add gongs in post.

00:18:48 ◼   ► Okay.

00:18:50 ◼   ► Do you want a gong in post?

00:18:51 ◼   ► I'll leave it to your discretion.

00:18:54 ◼   ► I mean, if you do, we could just do it again, say it again now, and then there'll be a

00:18:58 ◼   ► gong.

00:18:58 ◼   ► Because if I put the gong in before, it won't make any sense, right?

00:19:01 ◼   ► Well, no, I mean, this is all great stuff.

00:19:03 ◼   ► So why don't we just say, I'm going to say it now.

00:19:06 ◼   ► Yeah, and then I'll put the gong in.

00:19:08 ◼   ► And we'll see if there's a gong there.

00:19:10 ◼   ► And the winner for best iOS app, Overcast.

00:19:13 ◼   ► Ooh.

00:19:15 ◼   ► It's good, right?

00:19:16 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:19:17 ◼   ► Thank you.

00:19:17 ◼   ► That's what I want.

00:19:18 ◼   ► It's just, it's very, it feels very formal to have a gong.

00:19:21 ◼   ► You know I like as much pomp and circumstance as possible in these episodes.

00:19:27 ◼   ► So, congratulations to Overcast.

00:19:30 ◼   ► All right, let's talk about the best newcomer iOS app.

00:19:34 ◼   ► So the best new iOS app of the year.

00:19:36 ◼   ► The Upgradients with 5.9% voted for Flighty, which is the flight tracking application.

00:19:42 ◼   ► 6.2%, my love, Timery.

00:19:46 ◼   ► And 7%, Disney+.

00:19:48 ◼   ► What have you got for the best newcomer iOS app of the year?

00:19:52 ◼   ► Disney+ was a surprise to me.

00:19:54 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:19:54 ◼   ► Because it's not, my understanding is it's not a great app, but people are a fan of the

00:19:58 ◼   ► service, I guess.

00:20:00 ◼   ► Yeah, it runs on iOS.

00:20:02 ◼   ► And I am going to, I feel like I'm just pulling up in my car and firing off an air horn here

00:20:08 ◼   ► just to bother everybody.

00:20:09 ◼   ► But I do that sometimes when I nominate things for the Upgradies.

00:20:12 ◼   ► I like to occasionally be provocative.

00:20:15 ◼   ► And we waited for it, and we waited for it, and we waited for it.

00:20:19 ◼   ► A new iOS app for a year, for more than a year, we waited for it.

00:20:24 ◼   ► And then it arrived.

00:20:27 ◼   ► And you know, it's pretty good.

00:20:28 ◼   ► It's got a lot of work to do, but it's actually pretty good, and it's nice that it's here.

00:20:32 ◼   ► It's Photoshop.

00:20:34 ◼   ► It's Adobe Photoshop.

00:20:35 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, I'm doing it.

00:20:38 ◼   ► I'm saying it.

00:20:39 ◼   ► I made a dumb Photoshopped image on my iPad sitting on my couch with layers and stuff,

00:20:47 ◼   ► and it all worked.

00:20:48 ◼   ► And I'm glad that it's there, and I'm glad that Adobe's building it.

00:20:52 ◼   ► And I think it's a big deal that they have embraced the iPad as a real platform for their

00:20:58 ◼   ► users instead of making these weird toy apps, phone apps, that they were making before.

00:21:02 ◼   ► So yeah, there it is.

00:21:04 ◼   ► It's Photoshop.

00:21:05 ◼   ► It's full Photoshop, not actually full.

00:21:07 ◼   ► I don't really know what to say about this, because like, the application itself, I get

00:21:17 ◼   ► it, right?

00:21:18 ◼   ► I get your point, right?

00:21:18 ◼   ► Like, it exists now and is kind of good, but it has been marred in controversy of not being

00:21:25 ◼   ► good enough, right?

00:21:26 ◼   ► Like, that's the interesting thing about this application.

00:21:28 ◼   ► But this isn't...

00:21:31 ◼   ► But it's new.

00:21:33 ◼   ► It's all new.

00:21:34 ◼   ► It's new, isn't it?

00:21:34 ◼   ► It's the best new.

00:21:35 ◼   ► I have a couple of apps here that I am thinking about.

00:21:39 ◼   ► So of course, I will put Timery in again, right?

00:21:42 ◼   ► I thought Timery was the best iOS app of the year, and it was new this year.

00:21:46 ◼   ► So that's definitely in there.

00:21:48 ◼   ► But I also wanted to throw in for contention an application that I really enjoy called

00:21:51 ◼   ► Tripsee, which is like a trip itinerary application. It's very iOS-y. It's built of iOS 13.

00:22:00 ◼   ► It looks beautiful and has that kind of design to it.

00:22:02 ◼   ► And it's a very nice application to help you plan out trips that you're going on.

00:22:06 ◼   ► You can also forward itinerary information to it.

00:22:09 ◼   ► So like hotels and flights, you can forward them by email, and it will put them into the

00:22:14 ◼   ► itineraries that you set up in the app.

00:22:16 ◼   ► So for every trip that you do, you can have its own little section, and you can add in

00:22:19 ◼   ► documents and PDFs and stuff of maybe receipts that you've got, boarding cards.

00:22:25 ◼   ► You can add -- it also has like an inbuilt directory of places and events.

00:22:30 ◼   ► So you can say like, "Oh, I want to go to this place when I go to this country," or

00:22:34 ◼   ► whatever.

00:22:34 ◼   ► So it's a very nice application, and I like it a lot.

00:22:37 ◼   ► But it doesn't beat Timery for me as my favorite newcomer iOS app of the year.

00:22:44 ◼   ► So that's where I am.

00:22:46 ◼   ► I have no opinion on Disney+ because I can't use it, which makes me very hesitant to want

00:22:52 ◼   ► to award it, even though it was the Upgrading's pick.

00:22:55 ◼   ► I really want to pull for Timery on this one, Jason.

00:22:59 ◼   ► >> I was going to say I have no opinion about Timery because I don't track my time, or perhaps

00:23:05 ◼   ► because I live outside of your concept of space and time.

00:23:09 ◼   ► >> Exactly.

00:23:09 ◼   ► >> But suffice to say, it was second place in the Upgrading's vote, and it was your

00:23:15 ◼   ► choice, and it sounds great, and it's new, and I love it.

00:23:18 ◼   ► So that's enough for me.

00:23:20 ◼   ► >> Hooray!

00:23:20 ◼   ► >> Please, I've done my job in nominating Photoshop.

00:23:24 ◼   ► >> So I will run through these.

00:23:26 ◼   ► The runners up for the best newcomer iOS app are Disney+ and Photoshop, with the winner

00:23:33 ◼   ► of the best newcomer iOS app of 2019 being Timery.

00:23:37 ◼   ► I'm very pleased about that one.

00:23:38 ◼   ► I did realize, you know, I was looking at the Upgrading's.

00:23:41 ◼   ► This is obviously one of the categories you could never be -- there can never be a lifetime

00:23:45 ◼   ► achievement winner in, which is kind of fun.

00:23:47 ◼   ► So we now move into the category that spawned the entire creation of having the Upgrading's

00:23:55 ◼   ► assist us in voting.

00:23:56 ◼   ► That is the best Mac app, because there was a year when neither of us could think of one,

00:24:01 ◼   ► or the best -- both the best Mac app and best newcomer Mac app.

00:24:05 ◼   ► We needed the help from our Upgrading's, so the Upgrading's voted thusly for the best

00:24:10 ◼   ► Mac app currently available.

00:24:12 ◼   ► OmniFocus, 4% of the vote.

00:24:15 ◼   ► 4.1% of the vote is 1 password, and 4.8% of the vote is things.

00:24:21 ◼   ► Very close.

00:24:22 ◼   ► There were lots and lots.

00:24:23 ◼   ► This is one of the categories that had the most, like, individual nominations, which

00:24:29 ◼   ► is not surprising, because there are lots and lots of Mac apps available.

00:24:33 ◼   ► I will say at this point, Jason, I have no real feeling of picking a winner in this category.

00:24:40 ◼   ► I don't really have a nomination of my own.

00:24:42 ◼   ► This year, I don't really feel any great affinity for any application itself.

00:24:49 ◼   ► And so I want to go to you on this one.

00:24:54 ◼   ► What is your favorite Mac app this year?

00:24:57 ◼   ► So I decided, again, to not nominate the same old things.

00:25:02 ◼   ► My own little hall of fame, right?

00:25:03 ◼   ► My own little lifetime achievement awards, where I'm like, you know, I'm not going to

00:25:07 ◼   ► pick Logic or Final Cut or BB Editor.

00:25:10 ◼   ► This was my thing.

00:25:11 ◼   ► All of the apps that I was coming to, I've picked too much, like Logic or Audio Hijack.

00:25:15 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:25:16 ◼   ► I just feel like I'm playing the hits, you know?

00:25:20 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:25:21 ◼   ► Which there's nothing wrong with having a strong song book, but I want to do something new.

00:25:26 ◼   ► So this year, when I do incomparable t-shirts and some of the artwork, I occasionally need

00:25:35 ◼   ► to use Adobe Illustrator because I have outlines that, you know, they're vector files with

00:25:42 ◼   ► art, the show art and the show logos.

00:25:45 ◼   ► And I don't do it that much, and I'm not creating my own art.

00:25:49 ◼   ► I'm really using it to kind of like remove layers and move things around and export files

00:25:53 ◼   ► in certain sizes and certain formats.

00:25:56 ◼   ► And Catalina came out this year.

00:26:00 ◼   ► And I don't use Illustrator enough to pay a large amount of money to Adobe in order to

00:26:10 ◼   ► use it twice a year.

00:26:11 ◼   ► Right, because your version was the non-Creative Cloud version.

00:26:15 ◼   ► So I had CS5, which I got like a very long time ago and just kept laying around because

00:26:23 ◼   ► I only ever needed it once or twice a year for Illustrator.

00:26:27 ◼   ► And I do pay for Creative Cloud, but just for Photoshop and Illustrator just doesn't

00:26:32 ◼   ► make sense to pay for it.

00:26:34 ◼   ► And this year Catalina comes out and I think, oh no, it's not going to work anymore.

00:26:40 ◼   ► Illustrator CS5 is not going to work anymore.

00:26:42 ◼   ► I tried to put it in a virtual machine.

00:26:43 ◼   ► It's like, oh, it sort of doesn't want to open files and it's really slow and it's really

00:26:49 ◼   ► weird and I'm running a whole virtual machine just to run this.

00:26:53 ◼   ► And my friend, Antony Johnston, who is an Illustrator user from way back this year was

00:27:00 ◼   ► telling me how he has now switched to the Affinity apps from Serif.

00:27:06 ◼   ► And that if I really wanted to do this right, I would just go and buy Affinity Designer,

00:27:15 ◼   ► which is a, you know, it's like a one-time purchase for, I want to say $50?

00:27:22 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, that seems about right.

00:27:24 ◼   ► And then I will have that for, yeah, it's for $50 and it might've been on sale when

00:27:30 ◼   ► I bought it, but then I'll have a native modern app that does everything that Illustrator

00:27:36 ◼   ► did that I needed to do.

00:27:37 ◼   ► And then I can keep that because that is not a subscription and that app is going to presumably

00:27:43 ◼   ► work for quite a while and $50 once as opposed to spending, you know, a hundred or more,

00:27:50 ◼   ► $200 a year for a thing I only need twice.

00:27:53 ◼   ► And it's great.

00:27:54 ◼   ► And those Affinity apps are all really good and it really does.

00:27:58 ◼   ► Adobe, I want to say it puts Adobe to shame.

00:28:01 ◼   ► That's not quite right because Adobe's business is very different and Adobe's, it's a little

00:28:05 ◼   ► like Microsoft, right?

00:28:06 ◼   ► Where Microsoft has the burden of having so many customers that the decisions they make

00:28:11 ◼   ► are kind of ponderous and careful because they have to be.

00:28:14 ◼   ► Whereas Affinity is actually a little like Apple was back in the day, whereas they're

00:28:18 ◼   ► the upstart and they can just make their decisions to do it.

00:28:22 ◼   ► But regardless, Affinity Designer really impressed me this year, which is why I'm going to nominate

00:28:26 ◼   ► it because it took me out of an app that I've been using occasionally for a very long time.

00:28:31 ◼   ► And that's on a subscription model now where it's not relevant for me anymore.

00:28:36 ◼   ► And this is a great replacement for it.

00:28:37 ◼   ► So I was super impressed with Affinity Designer and Affinity stuff in general from Sarah.

00:28:41 ◼   ► - I am 100% on board of giving that the win. - Okay, let's do it.

00:28:48 ◼   ► - So here's the thing.

00:28:48 ◼   ► Things, 1Password and OmniFocus.

00:28:50 ◼   ► - Well, OmniFocus 3 was new in either very, very, very late 2018 or very, very, very early

00:28:56 ◼   ► 2019.

00:28:57 ◼   ► So I could see an argument for OmniFocus 3, even though I don't use it because again,

00:29:02 ◼   ► - I think it's 4?

00:29:02 ◼   ► - I exist outside of-

00:29:04 ◼   ► - No, you're right.

00:29:05 ◼   ► Sorry, OmniFocus 3 and Things 3.

00:29:07 ◼   ► But here's my thing on this, Jason.

00:29:10 ◼   ► Those applications, they come up all the time, right?

00:29:17 ◼   ► Things and OmniFocus in the category.

00:29:18 ◼   ► - And OmniFocus actually 3 was in 2018 and they did some updates this year, but yeah.

00:29:22 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:29:23 ◼   ► They come up constantly, right?

00:29:24 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:29:25 ◼   ► - I will admit, obviously, neither OmniFocus or Things have won.

00:29:29 ◼   ► But the reason that I feel this way is I think that Affinity are a very cool, new,

00:29:39 ◼   ► exciting company who also do a great job of making really powerful iPad software as well,

00:29:46 ◼   ► that complement these applications.

00:29:48 ◼   ► And they have a whole suite of products.

00:29:51 ◼   ► And I think that they are a cool company that I think I would like to give an award to.

00:29:58 ◼   ► That's my thinking.

00:30:00 ◼   ► I love OmniFocus.

00:30:02 ◼   ► I love Things.

00:30:04 ◼   ► Those applications are really well made, but they've been around for a while.

00:30:08 ◼   ► And there's just something about it to me where Affinity Designer is a cool application

00:30:13 ◼   ► that's building on a trend that exists now.

00:30:15 ◼   ► And I think it would be really great to give them the win.

00:30:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, let's do it.

00:30:20 ◼   ► - All right.

00:30:20 ◼   ► So Affinity Designer wins the best Mac app in 2019 with Things being the runner-up there.

00:30:28 ◼   ► We should give them one runner-up because I didn't have a pick.

00:30:31 ◼   ► So we're now moving to another application category that I'm afraid, Jason, I have even

00:30:37 ◼   ► less picks for, which is the best newcomer Mac app.

00:30:41 ◼   ► Now, I was interested this year to wonder if we were gonna see any Catalyst apps in this

00:30:49 ◼   ► category.

00:30:50 ◼   ► We will see.

00:30:51 ◼   ► The Upgradients voted for Affinity Publisher at 5.9% of the vote.

00:30:56 ◼   ► What is Affinity Publisher?

00:30:59 ◼   ► - That's basically InDesign or QuarkXPress.

00:31:01 ◼   ► It's a page layout app.

00:31:03 ◼   ► - Right.

00:31:03 ◼   ► And that was in denu.

00:31:04 ◼   ► 8.3% is for NetNewswire, which is an application that I believe is not available public.

00:31:10 ◼   ► It's a beta, right?

00:31:11 ◼   ► - No, it's final.

00:31:12 ◼   ► - It's final?

00:31:13 ◼   ► - Mac is final.

00:31:14 ◼   ► The beta is for iOS.

00:31:15 ◼   ► - iOS.

00:31:15 ◼   ► Okay.

00:31:16 ◼   ► NetNewswire at 8.3% of the vote and Drafts at 16.2% of the vote, which is a classic iOS

00:31:23 ◼   ► app new for the Mac this year, which funnily enough, I will just state, which is a kind

00:31:29 ◼   ► of a peculiar thing for what I just mentioned a moment ago, Drafts 5 won the best newcomer

00:31:34 ◼   ► Mac app upgrade in 2018 because it was in beta.

00:31:38 ◼   ► - Ah, yes.

00:31:39 ◼   ► - So it is technically still eligible because it is now an available application, but would

00:31:45 ◼   ► be super weird for it to win this category.

00:31:47 ◼   ► - You can't win the newcomer award twice.

00:31:50 ◼   ► You can't do it.

00:31:51 ◼   ► - That is where we are, but let's talk about your pick for this category.

00:31:55 ◼   ► - I struggled because there aren't a lot of new Mac apps.

00:32:01 ◼   ► That's part of the problem.

00:32:03 ◼   ► - In a year when there should have been lots would be the thinking.

00:32:07 ◼   ► - Part of the problem the catalyst was supposed to solve.

00:32:09 ◼   ► I do have a couple of catalyst apps that I'd like to nominate, but first I'm also going

00:32:13 ◼   ► to mention NetNewswire.

00:32:15 ◼   ► NetNewswire has a long history.

00:32:17 ◼   ► You know, Brent Simmons wrote NetNewswire.

00:32:19 ◼   ► You know, he went and worked at Newsgator for a while.

00:32:25 ◼   ► The app got sold to BlackPixel.

00:32:29 ◼   ► And then I want to say in 2018, the source code and the rights to the name were given

00:32:37 ◼   ► back to Brent and he decided to start NetNewswire 5, I think, again, as an open source project.

00:32:45 ◼   ► So open source and he's managing the project, but other people can and are contributing.

00:32:50 ◼   ► And he wrote actually a really good blog post about how open source doesn't mean that they

00:32:56 ◼   ► don't have standards and that you can just sort of do whatever.

00:32:59 ◼   ► Like he's running the show and he is nobody I would get other than maybe Dave Weiner,

00:33:05 ◼   ► nobody has thought more for longer about RSS and RSS apps than Brent.

00:33:12 ◼   ► Like it is part of his soul.

00:33:15 ◼   ► And that new NetNewswire app for the Mac that is now out and yes, it's free.

00:33:22 ◼   ► It's open source.

00:33:23 ◼   ► It's really good.

00:33:26 ◼   ► There are other RSS readers.

00:33:27 ◼   ► It's not as full feature to some of the other RSS readers like Reader that are out there,

00:33:32 ◼   ► but it's really good.

00:33:33 ◼   ► There's now an iOS version too.

00:33:34 ◼   ► And I think there's something to be said for Brent's commitment to making great apps

00:33:41 ◼   ► and great Mac apps to NetNewswire, to bringing it back, to building it in this new way of

00:33:46 ◼   ► having it be an open source project that he's running instead of it being what it was before,

00:33:50 ◼   ► which is a commercial app, essentially traditional commercial app.

00:33:53 ◼   ► So I think it's worth considering that NetNewswire strongly because although it's not new,

00:33:58 ◼   ► it's also new, completely new, but old name, old app, but new app, new code.

00:34:07 ◼   ► I have two others that I'm going to mention.

00:34:10 ◼   ► One not as seriously and one more seriously that are catalyst apps.

00:34:14 ◼   ► A friend of the show, James Thompson wrote a stupid, brilliant, sorry, I didn't mean

00:34:22 ◼   ► stupid, well, I did, but also I meant brilliant.

00:34:24 ◼   ► He stupidly wrote a brilliant app.

00:34:26 ◼   ► How about that?

00:34:27 ◼   ► Aha.

00:34:28 ◼   ► Because we played Dungeons and Dragons with him this year and we're asking, we're saying

00:34:31 ◼   ► why isn't there a Dice app?

00:34:33 ◼   ► And James got that glint in his eye like he used to about the About box in Peacock where

00:34:39 ◼   ► he wrote a complete like multi-level game and Dice by Peacock was born and it shipped

00:34:46 ◼   ► and it is a catalyst app.

00:34:47 ◼   ► So it works on the Mac, even though he wrote it initially for iOS, it was his test of

00:34:52 ◼   ► catalyst and it is a beautiful 3D rendered dice rolling app with things you can customize

00:34:59 ◼   ► and it is, is it inconsequential because it's just a dice rolling up?

00:35:02 ◼   ► Yes.

00:35:02 ◼   ► Is it really well done and shows you a long time Mac developer trying to figure out how

00:35:08 ◼   ► catalyst works and how you can make it work better as a Mac app?

00:35:14 ◼   ► Yes.

00:35:14 ◼   ► So it's as silly as that app is.

00:35:16 ◼   ► One, we were involved in its creation, which is great.

00:35:19 ◼   ► And I think it's a great example.

00:35:21 ◼   ► So Dice by Peacock I want to nominate.

00:35:24 ◼   ► And more seriously, there's an app called Lookup, which is a dictionary app that is

00:35:30 ◼   ► a catalyst app.

00:35:31 ◼   ► It was an iOS app before.

00:35:32 ◼   ► And it is one of the best implemented catalyst apps.

00:35:38 ◼   ► The developer has taken, um, squircle apps.

00:35:43 ◼   ► They have taken great care in trying to make it feel like, uh, not just kind of an iOS

00:35:50 ◼   ► app in a window, but have, uh, you know, menus and other behaviors that, that feel very Mac

00:35:56 ◼   ► like and it's yes, it's just a dictionary app, but, um, it's really well done.

00:36:01 ◼   ► So those are, those are sort of my nominees.

00:36:03 ◼   ► I think.

00:36:03 ◼   ► I want to just say that Dice by Peacock is a runner up just because I want to do that.

00:36:10 ◼   ► So there we go.

00:36:11 ◼   ► And so I guess for winner looking at what we've got here, I think we'll go with net

00:36:17 ◼   ► newswire, right?

00:36:18 ◼   ► I think so.

00:36:19 ◼   ► I think that's the right thing to do.

00:36:20 ◼   ► I agree that we can't, we shouldn't award drafts again in the newcomer category, but

00:36:25 ◼   ► that it doesn't make sense.

00:36:26 ◼   ► Goes to the heart of, um, our process, right?

00:36:30 ◼   ► Like the, the, the whole, um, the integrity of the upgrade.

00:36:35 ◼   ► These would be questioned if some app wins best newcomer twice.

00:36:38 ◼   ► Make any sense.

00:36:38 ◼   ► So the runner up for the best newcomer Mac app of 2019 is Dice by Peacock and the winner

00:36:45 ◼   ► is net news wire five.

00:36:46 ◼   ► Congratulations to Brent.

00:36:48 ◼   ► And open source people, right?

00:36:50 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

00:36:50 ◼   ► And contributors.

00:36:51 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:36:52 ◼   ► And good point.

00:36:53 ◼   ► Good point.

00:36:53 ◼   ► Good point.

00:36:53 ◼   ► So that concludes all of the app awards that we have.

00:36:58 ◼   ► Um, we're going to be moving into talking about media next, but before we do, I want

00:37:03 ◼   ► to thank the first sponsor of the upgrade is a 2019 and that is PDF pen from smile.

00:37:08 ◼   ► PDF pen is the 11 is the ultimate tool for editing PDFs on the Mac PDF pen at 11.2 lets

00:37:15 ◼   ► you easily edit the content in table cells in a PDF.

00:37:19 ◼   ► You can change typeface font size and other text formatting with PDF pens, font bar as

00:37:25 ◼   ► well.

00:37:25 ◼   ► This is a wild application.

00:37:26 ◼   ► The things that you are able to do to PDF documents using PDF pen.

00:37:29 ◼   ► It blows my mind all the time.

00:37:31 ◼   ► You can add, edit or remove images from your documents at PDF pen.

00:37:34 ◼   ► You can add headers, footers and watermarks and PDF pen for Mac supports Catalina and

00:37:39 ◼   ► PDF pen for iPad and iPhone is iOS 13 ready.

00:37:43 ◼   ► I use PDF pen on my iOS devices constantly for signing contracts or making amends to

00:37:48 ◼   ► them and such big, big fans.

00:37:49 ◼   ► This application, you can learn more about PDF pen and PDF pen pro@smilesoftware.com

00:37:55 ◼   ► slash podcast.

00:37:56 ◼   ► If you do any work of PDFs, you will need and use PDF pen.

00:38:00 ◼   ► Trust me on that one.

00:38:00 ◼   ► Go check it out for yourself right now at smile software.com/podcast.

00:38:05 ◼   ► Our thanks to PDF pen for their support of this show, relay FM and the 2019 upgrade awards.

00:38:12 ◼   ► So Jason, let's talk about the best game of the year.

00:38:18 ◼   ► The upgrade ends voted thusly with 4.9% of the award winning with the Legend of Zelda

00:38:27 ◼   ► Link's Awakening for the Nintendo Switch at 9.4% is Pokemon Sword and Shield and the 12.5%

00:38:34 ◼   ► is Untitled Goose Game, which makes a lot of sense.

00:38:39 ◼   ► Untitled Goose Game is a very, very fun game, but also is published by Panic, who are well

00:38:45 ◼   ► revered in the Apple community.

00:38:47 ◼   ► So I guess Untitled Goose Game was a surprise winner to me when I saw it.

00:38:51 ◼   ► But the more I thought about it, I was like, oh, I guess that makes sense to me why the

00:38:55 ◼   ► upgrade ends voted this way.

00:38:57 ◼   ► Now, as is typical with this category, best game typically means console PC game.

00:39:03 ◼   ► But Jason is a non console PC game player.

00:39:06 ◼   ► Yes.

00:39:06 ◼   ► You will usually go in the iOS category, which is perfectly valid.

00:39:10 ◼   ► Have you done so for 2019?

00:39:12 ◼   ► Yes, I have.

00:39:12 ◼   ► This is going to give away my best iOS game nomination, but I'm going to throw it in here.

00:39:17 ◼   ► And this is what happens every year, Myke.

00:39:19 ◼   ► It's a great upgrade tradition.

00:39:21 ◼   ► I nominate something that is not appropriate.

00:39:26 ◼   ► You choose the winner and we move on with our lives.

00:39:29 ◼   ► Okay.

00:39:29 ◼   ► What is your, you know what I'll say?

00:39:31 ◼   ► Don't give too much at the moment.

00:39:33 ◼   ► What is your game of the year?

00:39:35 ◼   ► I say much to my own surprise.

00:39:39 ◼   ► It's what the golf.

00:39:40 ◼   ► Okay.

00:39:41 ◼   ► Let's pause on what the golf for the moment.

00:39:44 ◼   ► Yes.

00:39:44 ◼   ► Spoiler alert.

00:39:45 ◼   ► It's it's also my iOS game.

00:39:47 ◼   ► Whoa.

00:39:48 ◼   ► Crazy.

00:39:49 ◼   ► My game of the year is Pokemon sword and shield.

00:39:51 ◼   ► It is a game with a lot of controversy around it, which I'm not going to get into right now.

00:39:56 ◼   ► But it is, I think just a fantastic entrance into the series,

00:40:03 ◼   ► especially for the first ever home console version of Pokemon brings a lot of interesting

00:40:09 ◼   ► developments to the series.

00:40:11 ◼   ► And I think is a great starting point for Pokemon going into the future as thought about

00:40:17 ◼   ► as a different kind of game, which isn't necessarily going to be handheld first anymore as it has

00:40:21 ◼   ► been for the last 20 years.

00:40:24 ◼   ► So Pokemon sword and shield is my favorite game of the year.

00:40:28 ◼   ► It was second in the upgrade ends.

00:40:30 ◼   ► So it's going to take the victory of Pokemon sword and shield, which is good.

00:40:34 ◼   ► I love it because Pokemon won last year as well with Pokemon.

00:40:37 ◼   ► Let's go.

00:40:38 ◼   ► So Pokemon sword and shield is the upgraded winner for 2019 with untitled goose game and

00:40:44 ◼   ► what the golf as the runners up sounds fine to me.

00:40:48 ◼   ► So Jason, let's talk about our favorite iOS games of the year.

00:40:55 ◼   ► Oh, tell me more.

00:40:56 ◼   ► Now this is interesting to me because all of the upgrade ends votes were Apple arcade

00:41:01 ◼   ► games.

00:41:02 ◼   ► Sayonara wild hearts, 8.7%, 8.8% for many motorways and 15.9% for what the golf.

00:41:13 ◼   ► Oh, what the golf.

00:41:15 ◼   ► Well, the, the upgrade ends are with me in loving what the golf, what the golf is like

00:41:22 ◼   ► when they announced Apple arcade and they said, oh, and there's this golf game.

00:41:25 ◼   ► I was like, oh boy.

00:41:26 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:41:26 ◼   ► Well golf game.

00:41:27 ◼   ► Great.

00:41:28 ◼   ► It's amazing.

00:41:30 ◼   ► That's the bottom line is I, I don't care about golf games.

00:41:34 ◼   ► I have played good golf games.

00:41:35 ◼   ► Desert golfing is good.

00:41:36 ◼   ► The whole noodle cake super stick man golf game is hilarious and good.

00:41:42 ◼   ► There are three of them now, but you know, it's, it feels a little tired as a genre and

00:41:51 ◼   ► I've seen a lot of it, but that's the whole point of what the golf is that it's essentially

00:41:54 ◼   ► a satire of golf games.

00:41:57 ◼   ► And then very quickly becomes a satire of every other kind of game you can think of.

00:42:02 ◼   ► And part of the joy of playing it is realizing what this level wants you to do and how it's

00:42:07 ◼   ► like some other games.

00:42:08 ◼   ► So there are, there are references to so many different games within what the golf, um,

00:42:14 ◼   ► plus the, um, plus it's a fun game and it is incredibly rare for me to not just play

00:42:20 ◼   ► a game through, but then to try and go back a hundred percent.

00:42:23 ◼   ► And I, I failed, but I did try.

00:42:26 ◼   ► I think I got to like 98%, uh, with what the golf, it is hilarious and challenging and

00:42:33 ◼   ► fun and dumb and funny.

00:42:35 ◼   ► And, uh, I, much to my surprise when I expected that the Apple arcade launch game that I would

00:42:42 ◼   ► like the most was mini motorways, the sequel to, uh, to mini Metro.

00:42:47 ◼   ► In fact, it was what the golf.

00:42:49 ◼   ► So, uh, I'm with the upgradians in praising what the golf.

00:42:52 ◼   ► And I'm with everybody.

00:42:54 ◼   ► It is the best, uh, Apple arcade game that I played this year.

00:42:57 ◼   ► And the most of the iOS games that I played this year are Apple arcade games.

00:43:01 ◼   ► And I've enjoyed many and we've spoken about them on the show, but what the golf is the

00:43:05 ◼   ► most surprising and most fun, uh, of all of the titles that I've played so far.

00:43:11 ◼   ► So we are in all complete agreement, which means no runners up the winner of the best

00:43:16 ◼   ► iOS game of the year is what the golf, what the golf, what the golf.

00:43:23 ◼   ► What the golf movie, favorite movie.

00:43:26 ◼   ► Now this is a weird one this year.

00:43:29 ◼   ► We'll get to it.

00:43:29 ◼   ► So upgradians voted at 1.2% of the vote.

00:43:32 ◼   ► Once upon a time in Hollywood at 1.4% of the vote knives out 6% of the vote Avengers end

00:43:39 ◼   ► game.

00:43:40 ◼   ► So a few interesting things that happened here.

00:43:42 ◼   ► Uh, not, there was lots of options, no huge winner.

00:43:47 ◼   ► Um, star Wars did not rank very highly.

00:43:53 ◼   ► It's an interesting thing where typically like, you know, the star Wars movies come

00:43:57 ◼   ► out very close to the upgrade ease, but people still get the votes in and loved so much.

00:44:02 ◼   ► Usually that they will get up there, but this year that did not happen for, I think some

00:44:06 ◼   ► interesting reasons and things that maybe we don't need to get into right now.

00:44:09 ◼   ► Um, but that, that's kinda where we are with the movies.

00:44:13 ◼   ► I don't think that this year, like looking back at previous years was as strong a year

00:44:20 ◼   ► for movies as previous upgradey award-winning years has been.

00:44:24 ◼   ► You are someone who's much more plugged into this world.

00:44:26 ◼   ► Do you agree with that?

00:44:27 ◼   ► Yeah, I do.

00:44:28 ◼   ► I, I didn't see that many movies this year.

00:44:30 ◼   ► And you could take that as an indictment of the movies that there was nothing out there.

00:44:34 ◼   ► There were not a lot, a lot of things that prompted me to get out there.

00:44:36 ◼   ► It's also an indictment of me for being a bad movie goer.

00:44:39 ◼   ► I don't go out and see movies that often.

00:44:41 ◼   ► Um, I just don't, there's logistics of like, do I want to go see, I can go see a movie

00:44:45 ◼   ► whenever I want, but if it's a movie that I want to see and, you know, I probably want

00:44:50 ◼   ► to see it with my family or with my wife.

00:44:53 ◼   ► And, uh, and so then it's like, well, let's just wait until, and then we never have a

00:44:58 ◼   ► time that we can do it.

00:44:59 ◼   ► It would be much different if like, literally the rest of my family said, we never want

00:45:03 ◼   ► to see a movie.

00:45:04 ◼   ► It could be like, all right, well, I'm going to go see this movie, but that's not the case.

00:45:07 ◼   ► And so it's this ironic kind of like, uh, thing where I'm, um, I'm because I want to

00:45:16 ◼   ► see it, but I want to see it with my family.

00:45:18 ◼   ► I don't see it.

00:45:19 ◼   ► And maybe I see it later when it comes out.

00:45:21 ◼   ► This is pretty much my exact problem too.

00:45:23 ◼   ► I haven't seen, like, I've really wanted to see Knives Out and have not been able to see

00:45:27 ◼   ► it yet.

00:45:27 ◼   ► We all agree that we should go see it and it just hasn't happened.

00:45:31 ◼   ► Um, that said, I'm going, uh, we, we tend to pick, uh, very, uh, big, uh, crowd-pleasing,

00:45:42 ◼   ► this is not a serious movie review podcast award.

00:45:44 ◼   ► This is a crowd-pleasing nerd, usually movie award.

00:45:49 ◼   ► And I actually, in that context of the fact that we've picked star Wars movies and Marvel

00:45:54 ◼   ► movies in the past for this award, like exclusively, I'm actually going to pick Avengers Endgame

00:46:01 ◼   ► and I'm going to do it because, and this is, if you read this as me taking a little bit

00:46:05 ◼   ► of a shot at the new star Wars movie, it is, I don't hate the new star Wars movie.

00:46:09 ◼   ► Um, there's a whole podcast where we talked about for two and a half hours, you can go

00:46:12 ◼   ► listen to the incomparable.

00:46:13 ◼   ► Um, but it has issues, some serious issues and if you enjoy it great.

00:46:19 ◼   ► And if you didn't enjoy it, I understand.

00:46:21 ◼   ► Um, I'm kind of neither of those.

00:46:26 ◼   ► Um, but this is not about star Wars.

00:46:28 ◼   ► My point here is endings are hard.

00:46:31 ◼   ► Star Wars trying to do an ending is very hard because they're trying to wrap up, you know,

00:46:35 ◼   ► all these movies over the course of decades and everybody's childhood and, and all of

00:46:38 ◼   ► those things that all said.

00:46:40 ◼   ► Avengers Endgame has to wrap up the storylines of 20 plus Marvel movies.

00:46:46 ◼   ► And although in some ways that was an easier task because of the space that it takes in

00:46:51 ◼   ► our brains to something like star Wars, um, I, it's so easy to just kind of brush it off

00:46:58 ◼   ► and be like, Oh yeah, it's a Marvel movie and it made billions of dollars and whatever.

00:47:02 ◼   ► It's like, no, Avengers Endgame actually really worked.

00:47:06 ◼   ► And coming out of the, the end of infinity war, which was a cliffhanger essentially,

00:47:11 ◼   ► and also kind of a downer, they have to pick up the ball and they have to get the band

00:47:16 ◼   ► back together and they have to tell a, an emotionally fulfilling and exciting story

00:47:20 ◼   ► that resolves the storyline of a lot of characters and do it in, in this case in three hours,

00:47:26 ◼   ► which, you know, the fact was it was an entertaining movie at three hours.

00:47:30 ◼   ► I think it is worth recognizing Avengers Endgame for successfully landing more or less an enormous

00:47:38 ◼   ► franchise movie in a way that was not soul crushing and was actually kind of emotionally

00:47:42 ◼   ► fulfilling.

00:47:43 ◼   ► I think it's a, I think it's a real achievement, sort of the same kind of achievement the original

00:47:47 ◼   ► Avengers movie was in feeling like a corporate cash grab that turned out to actually be a

00:47:52 ◼   ► good movie, despite like no possibility that that was the case.

00:47:56 ◼   ► So I think it's worth as it recedes into the rear view a little bit, giving a nod to

00:48:01 ◼   ► Avengers Endgame.

00:48:02 ◼   ► This is the kind of movie that we give these awards to and, and they nailed it.

00:48:07 ◼   ► So my, my winner is Avengers Endgame too.

00:48:13 ◼   ► I think Avengers Endgame did a better job of being Star Wars than Star Wars did this

00:48:18 ◼   ► year.

00:48:18 ◼   ► It was faced with all of the same challenges that the Star Wars movie was faced with.

00:48:23 ◼   ► Like, like all the things you've mentioned, right?

00:48:26 ◼   ► Wrapping up a huge franchise with a ton of baggage and loose ends to tie up, or at least

00:48:31 ◼   ► to try the best to tie up and also to bounce back from a movie that wasn't as enjoyed by

00:48:37 ◼   ► a lot of the fandom because it was like a real downer, as you mentioned, right?

00:48:42 ◼   ► And Avengers nailed it.

00:48:44 ◼   ► Like the way I felt in that Avengers movie is how I should have felt watching Rise of

00:48:49 ◼   ► the Skywalker and didn't like, I cried for like three hours watching the Avengers movie.

00:48:54 ◼   ► Like I was just crying constantly.

00:48:56 ◼   ► Like that film hit me.

00:48:58 ◼   ► It made me realize that the Avengers movies for me are more like the way that you and

00:49:06 ◼   ► some of our friends feel about Star Wars.

00:49:08 ◼   ► Because I grew up with the Avengers movies, right?

00:49:12 ◼   ► Like for the time that they've been going on, I've been watching them all as they've

00:49:16 ◼   ► been coming out.

00:49:17 ◼   ► Like I came to Star Wars as a kid, but afterwards, right?

00:49:21 ◼   ► Like my first time I saw Star Wars was when they released the special editions on VHS.

00:49:27 ◼   ► Like they were the first Star Wars movies that I saw, because that was when I could

00:49:32 ◼   ► have seen them.

00:49:33 ◼   ► When else would I have seen them, right?

00:49:36 ◼   ► So that was when-

00:49:36 ◼   ► Time machine.

00:49:36 ◼   ► Time machine.

00:49:38 ◼   ► That's a good point.

00:49:38 ◼   ► There's no time travel in Star Wars, actually.

00:49:41 ◼   ► That's one place they haven't gone.

00:49:42 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:49:43 ◼   ► But let me just say, like kind of like my overall, kind of spoken about having the chance

00:49:47 ◼   ► to speak about this.

00:49:48 ◼   ► I'm kind of pleased we didn't set a mic at the movies because my kind of feeling on the

00:49:54 ◼   ► Star Wars movie this year was kind of like, okay, like it was a fine movie, but it did

00:50:00 ◼   ► not give me what I was looking for in a like big conclusion.

00:50:04 ◼   ► Kind of just like, like it washed over me a bit, right?

00:50:09 ◼   ► Or it's just like, that was a nice movie, but that's not what I want out of a Star Wars

00:50:15 ◼   ► movie.

00:50:15 ◼   ► Because the last two succeeded for me more in being these big emotional, cathartic things.

00:50:23 ◼   ► And I feel like this movie was just like two hours of fan service that didn't connect with

00:50:30 ◼   ► me.

00:50:30 ◼   ► But it was a fine movie.

00:50:33 ◼   ► Like I don't think it was bad, but it just didn't give me the kick that I wanted.

00:50:40 ◼   ► But Avengers Endgame did.

00:50:41 ◼   ► I loved that movie.

00:50:43 ◼   ► So Avengers Endgame will win the upgrade for this year.

00:50:48 ◼   ► So again, unanimous decision.

00:50:52 ◼   ► Am I completely off base about Star Wars?

00:50:53 ◼   ► I haven't listened to the incomparable yet, so I'm excited to kind of hear what you have

00:50:58 ◼   ► to say.

00:50:58 ◼   ► No, you're not.

00:51:00 ◼   ► Although, you know, we get complaints because people have opinions and they disagree and

00:51:06 ◼   ► then they're outraged that we don't agree with them.

00:51:08 ◼   ► Well, of course.

00:51:08 ◼   ► That's fine.

00:51:09 ◼   ► I would say our take is a measured take, too.

00:51:11 ◼   ► Some people really liked it.

00:51:13 ◼   ► Some people didn't like it as much.

00:51:15 ◼   ► I'm on the "didn't like it as much" side.

00:51:16 ◼   ► I think it's, without again going too far into it, I think as a movie, it kind of doesn't

00:51:22 ◼   ► work.

00:51:22 ◼   ► I think as a series of check boxes to finish a franchise, it does the job.

00:51:30 ◼   ► But I actually sat...

00:51:33 ◼   ► One of the reasons that I appreciate Avengers Endgame more now is they took three hours

00:51:38 ◼   ► and they gave it some space to have a lot of emotional weight and a lot of character

00:51:44 ◼   ► moments as well as the action stuff.

00:51:47 ◼   ► And the Star Wars movie is two hours and 20 or something and doesn't stop for those moments

00:51:56 ◼   ► as much as it should.

00:51:57 ◼   ► And I thought to myself, this should have either been two movies or part one and two,

00:52:03 ◼   ► or it should have been three hours long and done what Endgame did.

00:52:08 ◼   ► And it didn't do either.

00:52:09 ◼   ► And I think it's the worst for it.

00:52:10 ◼   ► So some people hate it.

00:52:12 ◼   ► Some people like it.

00:52:14 ◼   ► And I'm satisfying no one.

00:52:17 ◼   ► I'm sort of with you, which is...

00:52:18 ◼   ► - I think you are allowed to hate this movie.

00:52:21 ◼   ► You're allowed to love this movie.

00:52:23 ◼   ► And that is awesome.

00:52:24 ◼   ► - You are.

00:52:24 ◼   ► - You do your own thing.

00:52:26 ◼   ► I just felt bang in the middle on it.

00:52:27 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:52:28 ◼   ► You're allowed to feel bang in the middle about it.

00:52:32 ◼   ► That's the thing is the people who hate it often don't think that anyone else is allowed

00:52:36 ◼   ► to have a different opinion on it or to be in between on it.

00:52:39 ◼   ► It's like you're allowed to be in between on it.

00:52:40 ◼   ► It makes total sense.

00:52:41 ◼   ► - I would also say that for a lot of people that love it, they think you're not allowed

00:52:44 ◼   ► to have another opinion on it either.

00:52:45 ◼   ► - Yes, that is also true.

00:52:47 ◼   ► - I don't think it's just for hate.

00:52:47 ◼   ► - No, it's...

00:52:47 ◼   ► Well, people who are full of hate in their hearts are gonna be more annoying about it

00:52:53 ◼   ► than people who are full of love in their hearts.

00:52:55 ◼   ► But yes, you're right.

00:52:56 ◼   ► Extreme opinions don't like non-extreme opinions.

00:52:59 ◼   ► - You either have...

00:53:00 ◼   ► It's like the Star Wars universe.

00:53:02 ◼   ► You have the dark side and the light side, but you also have the regular people.

00:53:05 ◼   ► And we're just regular people in the Star Wars universe.

00:53:07 ◼   ► - We're in the gray zone here.

00:53:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:53:09 ◼   ► Let's talk about TV, Myke.

00:53:11 ◼   ► - Oh, TV.

00:53:12 ◼   ► Let's do this.

00:53:13 ◼   ► I'm excited about this category because it's been a fantastic year for television.

00:53:18 ◼   ► The Upgradians voted thusly in the television category at 8.4% for all mankind, 12.1% Watchmen,

00:53:26 ◼   ► and 14.2% The Mandalorian.

00:53:28 ◼   ► Similarly to Disney Plus, I can't talk about The Mandalorian.

00:53:32 ◼   ► I don't want to talk about The Mandalorian because I can't watch it until March.

00:53:35 ◼   ► - It's real good.

00:53:37 ◼   ► And I didn't put it on my top 10 list, but I might've revised it and put it on after

00:53:44 ◼   ► the last couple of episodes because I think it finished very, very strongly.

00:53:47 ◼   ► - Very excited to see that show though.

00:53:49 ◼   ► Jason, do you wanna tell me what your favorite television show of the year is?

00:53:52 ◼   ► Like I don't already know.

00:53:53 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:53:54 ◼   ► Number...

00:53:54 ◼   ► It was number one on my list.

00:53:55 ◼   ► And while I really enjoyed The Mandalorian and I had For All Mankind in my top 10,

00:54:00 ◼   ► and there's an episode of TV Talk Machine where I listed my top 10 shows of the year

00:54:04 ◼   ► and forgot The Magicians, which probably should have been on there.

00:54:06 ◼   ► Number one is Watchmen on HBO, Damon Lindelof's sequel to the classic comic book series by Alan

00:54:15 ◼   ► Moore and Dave Gibbons that was set in the '80s.

00:54:17 ◼   ► This is set in the present day, nine episodes, manages to do individual episodes that are

00:54:25 ◼   ► spectacular and ongoing storyline that is very meaningful in terms of its themes.

00:54:29 ◼   ► It has a point of view as the original did.

00:54:33 ◼   ► It is actually very strongly political in certain ways as the original was.

00:54:39 ◼   ► It's structured similarly to the original as well.

00:54:44 ◼   ► It's got sort of like a second storyline that's happening in parallel.

00:54:47 ◼   ► It's got a big slam bang ending that is very sci-fi after a sort of gritty noirish

00:54:54 ◼   ► mystery beginning.

00:54:55 ◼   ► You know, I see what you're doing there.

00:54:59 ◼   ► And it's a spectacular magic trick.

00:55:02 ◼   ► I could never have imagined that it would have been as successful as it was when it

00:55:06 ◼   ► was announced.

00:55:07 ◼   ► I thought, "What are they doing?

00:55:08 ◼   ► Present day and new characters and it's in Oklahoma and what's going on?"

00:55:12 ◼   ► No, they nailed it.

00:55:13 ◼   ► It's amazing.

00:55:13 ◼   ► Will it have a second season?

00:55:15 ◼   ► Nobody knows.

00:55:17 ◼   ► It may not.

00:55:17 ◼   ► It doesn't need one.

00:55:18 ◼   ► If they have a great idea to do another season of it, great.

00:55:22 ◼   ► But this one was perfect.

00:55:24 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:55:26 ◼   ► I absolutely adore Watchmen.

00:55:29 ◼   ► It's on my list.

00:55:30 ◼   ► My list is large and I want to talk about all other things on my list and we'll come

00:55:35 ◼   ► back to Watchmen in a minute.

00:55:36 ◼   ► I discovered Terrace House in 2019 and I absolutely adore this television show.

00:55:42 ◼   ► It is a Japanese reality show.

00:55:44 ◼   ► It is heartwarming and fascinating and wonderful.

00:55:49 ◼   ► It's on Netflix.

00:55:50 ◼   ► Netflix revived the show.

00:55:52 ◼   ► It was a Japanese television show that I think had been cancelled and Netflix brought it

00:55:57 ◼   ► back and it's now worldwide on Netflix, not just in Japan.

00:56:00 ◼   ► It's not like one of these shows that they bring from another network and revive it.

00:56:07 ◼   ► They completely revived it and it's now a Netflix original.

00:56:11 ◼   ► And I don't really know how to describe it.

00:56:15 ◼   ► It's unlike any other reality television show that you've seen before.

00:56:19 ◼   ► It is pretty much romance based, but I don't want to say it's like a dating reality show

00:56:23 ◼   ► because it's more than that.

00:56:24 ◼   ► But it is a beautiful slice into the average life of a young person in Japan.

00:56:30 ◼   ► It's a house where six people live together, but they can come and go.

00:56:34 ◼   ► They're not locked into the house.

00:56:36 ◼   ► There are no confessionals.

00:56:38 ◼   ► They're just living their lives.

00:56:39 ◼   ► The cameras are on pretty much all the time, but you don't get to see everything.

00:56:43 ◼   ► There are not cameras everywhere in the house either.

00:56:46 ◼   ► So they're able to have moments that occur in the show that are referenced by the characters,

00:56:51 ◼   ► but you never get to see them like conversations that may have happened.

00:56:54 ◼   ► And that can add to some additional interesting drama through the show.

00:56:58 ◼   ► And there is also my favorite thing.

00:57:01 ◼   ► There is a kind of a group of observers, like presenters of the show who are watching along

00:57:07 ◼   ► and they take breaks three times during the episode for them to comment on what they have

00:57:11 ◼   ► seen.

00:57:11 ◼   ► It's a fascinating way of doing it.

00:57:14 ◼   ► I absolutely love this TV show.

00:57:16 ◼   ► If that at all seems interesting to you in any way, go back and watch the first commit

00:57:23 ◼   ► yourself to like three episodes of the first season on Netflix, which is called Boys and

00:57:29 ◼   ► Girls in the City.

00:57:30 ◼   ► Just it's all in Japanese subtitles.

00:57:34 ◼   ► You can get used to that.

00:57:35 ◼   ► I got used to it.

00:57:36 ◼   ► Just give it a go.

00:57:37 ◼   ► Absolutely love this show.

00:57:38 ◼   ► My favorite show from Apple this year was for all mankind.

00:57:43 ◼   ► Yeah, that's the one that made my top 10 list, too.

00:57:46 ◼   ► Although I'm still going through the morning show and it's good.

00:57:50 ◼   ► But for all mankind is the one that I think they did a really great job in their first

00:57:55 ◼   ► season.

00:57:55 ◼   ► I would say whatever they do next.

00:57:57 ◼   ► Both shows and there are no spoilers here, but like both shows, both for all mankind

00:58:02 ◼   ► and the morning show are very good and they both get rocket strapped to them.

00:58:06 ◼   ► Metaphorical ones at the end of the shows.

00:58:08 ◼   ► Yeah, well, literally in the case of for all mankind.

00:58:11 ◼   ► But yeah.

00:58:12 ◼   ► And so I really, really love the end of like I love the way that the morning show ended.

00:58:17 ◼   ► And I also it's it can be difficult in places, but for all mankind has a really fascinating

00:58:22 ◼   ► and fantastic ending.

00:58:23 ◼   ► It's very dramatic to show dramatic in ways I wasn't expecting.

00:58:27 ◼   ► I was expecting the morning show to be the high drama one, but I think for all mankind

00:58:30 ◼   ► succeeds in that.

00:58:31 ◼   ► It's really, really well done.

00:58:33 ◼   ► It is definitely Apple's crown jewel.

00:58:35 ◼   ► And I'm surprised isn't the show that was getting nominations like Golden Globes.

00:58:40 ◼   ► Nominations seem to be all in the pocket of of the morning show, but not for all mankind.

00:58:48 ◼   ► The Bon Appetit YouTube channel.

00:58:49 ◼   ► It's just amazing.

00:58:51 ◼   ► OK.

00:58:51 ◼   ► It is the the the food magazine Bon Appetit.

00:58:55 ◼   ► They have a wonderful YouTube channel with two crowning achievement shows for me.

00:58:59 ◼   ► A show called It's Alive and a show called Gourmet Makes.

00:59:03 ◼   ► It's Alive with Brad Leone is if you were to say what is the show?

00:59:09 ◼   ► It is a show about fermenting food.

00:59:11 ◼   ► But like ignore that.

00:59:13 ◼   ► It is hilarious.

00:59:14 ◼   ► Bradley only is just this wonderful, bumbling human who just says and does hilarious things.

00:59:20 ◼   ► The editing is fantastic.

00:59:21 ◼   ► Just try it.

00:59:23 ◼   ► It's wonderful.

00:59:24 ◼   ► Gourmet Makes hosted by Claire Safetz.

00:59:26 ◼   ► She is a pastry chef who takes a popular candy or food item and tries to recreate it in a

00:59:31 ◼   ► gourmet way.

00:59:32 ◼   ► These two shows are full of heart, full of just really just wholesome, wonderful content.

00:59:38 ◼   ► Just just they are both these two seasons.

00:59:40 ◼   ► The entire channel is fantastic and there's a lot more content on it.

00:59:43 ◼   ► But these two shows are absolute powerhouses, like multiple millions of views per episode

00:59:49 ◼   ► kind of powerhouses for things that can sometimes be 45 minutes.

00:59:53 ◼   ► They have like I've read I've read a bunch of stuff about it and it's totally true.

00:59:56 ◼   ► Like Bon Appetit are the success story of the pivot to video like Bon Appetit the magazine

01:00:04 ◼   ► to pivot to video along with every other New York media company.

01:00:07 ◼   ► And it mostly didn't work for a lot of companies.

01:00:09 ◼   ► It 100% worked for Bon Appetit and has actually propelled the magazine to new places.

01:00:13 ◼   ► So wonderful.

01:00:15 ◼   ► But my favorite television show of the year is Watchmen.

01:00:17 ◼   ► I was expecting great things.

01:00:19 ◼   ► I heard great things.

01:00:20 ◼   ► It blew my mind.

01:00:21 ◼   ► Just unbelievable television show.

01:00:24 ◼   ► S

01:00:31 ◼   ► ere's a great show.

01:00:42 ◼   ► Chernobyl on HBO.

01:00:43 ◼   ► Spectacularly good.

01:00:44 ◼   ► Sex Education on Netflix.

01:00:47 ◼   ► So great.

01:00:49 ◼   ► If the title puts you off, if the premise puts you off, give it a shot.

01:00:53 ◼   ► It's incredibly good.

01:00:58 ◼   ► What I keep saying about it is it has empathy for every character in it.

01:01:01 ◼   ► And that is rare.

01:01:03 ◼   ► And what we do in the shadows, the vampire comedy on FX.

01:01:09 ◼   ► It is hilarious.

01:01:11 ◼   ► But Watchmen wins.

01:01:13 ◼   ► Yay.

01:01:13 ◼   ► Yeah, it's got to right.

01:01:15 ◼   ► The winner of this category is definitely Watchmen.

01:01:19 ◼   ► Just really cool, superb, nicely done television show.

01:01:24 ◼   ► So there we go.

01:01:27 ◼   ► Shall we talk about or let's talk about what was the runner up of the category for all

01:01:33 ◼   ► mankind in the Mandalorian.

01:01:34 ◼   ► Does that work for you?

01:01:35 ◼   ► Sure.

01:01:37 ◼   ► Yeah, let's go with that.

01:01:38 ◼   ► Favorite book.

01:01:40 ◼   ► My favorite category.

01:01:42 ◼   ► I get to pick because Myke doesn't read books.

01:01:45 ◼   ► I don't read books, but the upgradians voted thusly.

01:01:48 ◼   ► Tiamat's Wrath by James S.A. Corey with 2% of the vote.

01:01:53 ◼   ► Permanent Record series.

01:01:54 ◼   ► Yeah, that's from the Expanse.

01:01:55 ◼   ► Yes.

01:01:56 ◼   ► Thank you.

01:01:56 ◼   ► Permanent Record by Edward Snowden, which I assume is a memoir at 4.2%.

01:02:00 ◼   ► And by Relay FM host Dan Morin, The Bayan Agenda with 6.8% of the vote.

01:02:09 ◼   ► It's the sequel to a upgradey winner of the Caledonian gambit.

01:02:13 ◼   ► Yep.

01:02:14 ◼   ► Dan won in 2017.

01:02:16 ◼   ► What I'm saying is if you're a novelist, you should get to know us.

01:02:20 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:02:21 ◼   ► You may win awards.

01:02:24 ◼   ► Yeah, I had, I sort of listed five here.

01:02:29 ◼   ► Tiamat's Wrath I put on that.

01:02:31 ◼   ► That's actually a return to form for that series.

01:02:32 ◼   ► I thought the last book was a little bit weird, but book eight of nine was very good.

01:02:38 ◼   ► The Bayan Agenda, of course, has to be on my short list.

01:02:42 ◼   ► Becoming Superman by J. Michael Straczynski, which is a memoir.

01:02:47 ◼   ► It is an amazing story about a terrible childhood that he had and to become a successful Hollywood

01:02:55 ◼   ► screenwriter after the life that he led as a child is amazing.

01:03:00 ◼   ► The MVP Machine, which is a really great view into how modern sports science is changing,

01:03:07 ◼   ► in this case, baseball, but I think it's applicable to a lot of different sports and how sports is

01:03:12 ◼   ► really radically changing at a fundamental level now about how they treat the athletes and

01:03:17 ◼   ► analyze them and train them.

01:03:18 ◼   ► It was really an interesting book.

01:03:21 ◼   ► And another novel, The Cruel Stars by John Birmingham, which I could not have enjoyed

01:03:27 ◼   ► more.

01:03:27 ◼   ► It's a widescreen space opera with a bunch of different characters and a threat from

01:03:32 ◼   ► the outside and ancient evil returns.

01:03:37 ◼   ► And the only person who can stop it is a crusty old prospector, basically, on the town on

01:03:43 ◼   ► the planet.

01:03:44 ◼   ► A lot of fun.

01:03:45 ◼   ► I don't know what to do to pick a winner here.

01:03:48 ◼   ► What did we pick last year?

01:03:53 ◼   ► - Last year was the calculating stars.

01:03:56 ◼   ► - So I'm gonna pick my...

01:03:58 ◼   ► So with all of those as nominees, I think I'm gonna go...

01:04:04 ◼   ► Well, should we give it to Dan again?

01:04:06 ◼   ► Is Dan gonna expect it?

01:04:09 ◼   ► Are we gonna have to put Dan in the Hall of Fame if we just pick his book every time?

01:04:13 ◼   ► I'm gonna go with the best discovery I made because I view this as kind of a, here's a

01:04:18 ◼   ► book, here's a novel you might enjoy award.

01:04:20 ◼   ► And so I'm going to choose Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse, which is book one.

01:04:29 ◼   ► It was nominated for the Hugo and Nebula awards.

01:04:31 ◼   ► I really enjoyed it.

01:04:32 ◼   ► Book one in a series that is starting, but it's a great standalone novel.

01:04:37 ◼   ► The series is called The Sixth World, but Trail of Lightning.

01:04:43 ◼   ► That's the one, if you're looking for a novel to read, that's Jason's annual novel suggestion,

01:04:47 ◼   ► Trail of Lightning.

01:04:48 ◼   ► It is Buffy the Vampire Slayer, except she's Navajo and it's after a global warming-caused

01:04:56 ◼   ► apocalypse that has made most of the modern world fall apart, but the Navajo nation is

01:05:01 ◼   ► on the upswing.

01:05:02 ◼   ► Unfortunately, the apocalypse seems to have also opened the gateway to the return of powerful

01:05:10 ◼   ► beings from mythology, but it's about a teenage girl who's a monster hunter and doesn't love

01:05:20 ◼   ► it, but it's her job and it's great.

01:05:22 ◼   ► So the winner is Trail of Lightning with the nominee, The Byron Agenda.

01:05:28 ◼   ► The Byron Agenda, yeah.

01:05:30 ◼   ► Dan Morin, go buy it at bookstores now.

01:05:34 ◼   ► Bookstores now.

01:05:35 ◼   ► All right, this episode, well, I should say this episode is also brought to you by

01:05:39 ◼   ► Kensington.

01:05:40 ◼   ► We're about to move into the hardware, some of the hardware picks, tech-focused picks.

01:05:45 ◼   ► We are out of the woods of media until we get to podcasting later on.

01:05:49 ◼   ► That's this whole other section, but let's take a moment to thank Kensington, the people

01:05:54 ◼   ► who make universal docking stations that are designed to increase productivity.

01:05:58 ◼   ► It's super easy to use these products and you get access to more ports to make your

01:06:02 ◼   ► sleek MacBook, Chromebook or other laptop as powerful as a desktop.

01:06:06 ◼   ► Kensington devices are plug and play with no drivers, so you can enjoy up to dual 4K

01:06:11 ◼   ► displays of HDMI and DisplayLink video connectors, plus USB 3, USB C and Thunderbolt 3 with power

01:06:18 ◼   ► delivery available as well.

01:06:20 ◼   ► The Kensington engineering team has three decades of experience in high volume manufacturing

01:06:24 ◼   ► of hardware IT products with rigorous test cycles and quality control, meaning that all

01:06:29 ◼   ► of their products are tested above industry standards.

01:06:32 ◼   ► If you're an IT decision maker looking to find the right docking solutions for your

01:06:35 ◼   ► organisation, check Kensington's ProConcierge program out and test drive a docking solution

01:06:41 ◼   ► today.

01:06:42 ◼   ► Visit Kensington.com/upgrade right now to check out Kensington's line of products.

01:06:47 ◼   ► That's Kensington.com/upgrade to learn more.

01:06:50 ◼   ► Our thanks to Kensington for their support of this show, Relay FM and the Upgrading Awards.

01:06:55 ◼   ► And we move into Jason talking about the favourite Apple product of the year.

01:07:02 ◼   ► Interesting one this year.

01:07:03 ◼   ► Oh yeah, here we go.

01:07:03 ◼   ► So the Upgradients at 14.7% of the vote went with the iPhone 11 Pro at 17.1% of the vote,

01:07:14 ◼   ► unsurprisingly, is the 16 inch MacBook Pro with of course the non butterfly keyboard

01:07:20 ◼   ► and at a huge 29.

01:07:23 ◼   ► I actually, you know, I'm wrong in what I said earlier.

01:07:25 ◼   ► This is the single highest percentage win bumping out overcast from the Upgradients

01:07:30 ◼   ► at nearly a third, 29%, 29.8% in fact of the vote for the favourite Apple product of the

01:07:38 ◼   ► year is AirPods Pro.

01:07:40 ◼   ► Jason, what was your favourite Apple product this year?

01:07:45 ◼   ► AirPods Pro gets my vote again.

01:07:48 ◼   ► I'm surprised as I was with the original, like the people who make this product within

01:07:54 ◼   ► Apple, they are killing it.

01:07:56 ◼   ► They're doing a great job.

01:07:57 ◼   ► It is, I was skeptical in-ear headphones with noise cancelling.

01:08:01 ◼   ► How's that going to work?

01:08:02 ◼   ► And I've been using them since they came out and they're great.

01:08:07 ◼   ► And I wouldn't want to go back to the original AirPods.

01:08:10 ◼   ► I loved the original AirPods, but I like these even more.

01:08:12 ◼   ► I think it's, you know, an easy choice.

01:08:16 ◼   ► The MacBook Pro 16 is not really my cup of tea.

01:08:20 ◼   ► It's great that they replaced the keyboard, but also they could have made it.

01:08:23 ◼   ► It's rectifying a mistake from three years ago after three years of it sitting out there.

01:08:28 ◼   ► And the iPhones are all great.

01:08:30 ◼   ► It's a nice cycle for them, but it is an upgrade cycle.

01:08:35 ◼   ► None of them is new.

01:08:35 ◼   ► And for me, AirPods Pro is my choice for sure.

01:08:41 ◼   ► But what did you want, Myke?

01:08:42 ◼   ► Well, you're not going to get any argument from me about how incredible AirPods Pro are,

01:08:47 ◼   ► but I'm actually putting the iPhone 11 Pro as my vote this year

01:08:51 ◼   ► because I am genuinely surprised how much of an improvement this phone is in a couple of key areas.

01:09:02 ◼   ► So these are the things that we've been talking about the whole time

01:09:05 ◼   ► since the phone was first debuted.

01:09:06 ◼   ► What makes this phone different?

01:09:08 ◼   ► The camera improvements and the battery life.

01:09:10 ◼   ► But just how much of an improvement they are for me is so significantly more than previous years

01:09:20 ◼   ► that they've made.

01:09:20 ◼   ► I mean, these are the things they want to improve all the time, right?

01:09:23 ◼   ► Camera performance and battery life.

01:09:24 ◼   ► But they are so good.

01:09:28 ◼   ► The camera and battery on this phone is so freaking good.

01:09:32 ◼   ► Like I just went away for the holidays and I was able to use my phone like on travel days,

01:09:40 ◼   ► like getting on planes and like big heavy usage days.

01:09:44 ◼   ► I didn't charge my phone at all.

01:09:46 ◼   ► And this has never been the case before that I've been able to get through

01:09:50 ◼   ► like a heavy usage travel day without needing to charge my phone.

01:09:54 ◼   ► Like, you know, I can see it in screen time.

01:09:56 ◼   ► I'm talking like eight to nine plus hours of phone usage in a day without charging.

01:10:04 ◼   ► Like that is bonkers good.

01:10:07 ◼   ► I am so, so happy with the performance of this phone.

01:10:13 ◼   ► And I am just totally in love with the camera.

01:10:15 ◼   ► Like it is so good.

01:10:17 ◼   ► Like having the choice of the three lenses, but then also just like all of the processing

01:10:22 ◼   ► that Apple's doing on the chips.

01:10:23 ◼   ► Like I absolutely love the iPhone 11 Pro like way more than I would have expected.

01:10:28 ◼   ► But I am not going to fight for it to be the winner of the AirPods Pro because that is

01:10:34 ◼   ► a superb product.

01:10:36 ◼   ► Wise choice.

01:10:37 ◼   ► So the runner up for the favorite Apple product of the year is the iPhone 11 Pro with the

01:10:42 ◼   ► winner being the AirPods Pro.

01:10:46 ◼   ► So now we move into the best non-Apple product.

01:10:50 ◼   ► So the best product as used by Upgradients and me and Jason not made by Apple this year.

01:10:56 ◼   ► The Upgradients voted at 2.2% for the bridge keyboard.

01:10:58 ◼   ► We have an entry here that I will mention, but will not be included, which is at 2.3%

01:11:04 ◼   ► is the Motorola Razr.

01:11:05 ◼   ► Nobody's used this because it's not out yet, but it is a really cool looking thing.

01:11:09 ◼   ► We'll talk about this at some point in the future probably.

01:11:12 ◼   ► At 2.6% is the Tesla Cybertruck, which kind of makes me a little bit upset, I think.

01:11:17 ◼   ► Similar reasons.

01:11:18 ◼   ► Nobody's used it, but we'll keep going moving on.

01:11:21 ◼   ► And the Nintendo Switch Lite at 5.2% of the vote.

01:11:25 ◼   ► This is the new Nintendo Switch introduced this year, which is purely portable and is

01:11:30 ◼   ► a smaller design, doesn't connect to a TV, that kind of thing.

01:11:33 ◼   ► Jason, what is your favorite non-Apple product of the year?

01:11:37 ◼   ► I kind of struggled with this one.

01:11:38 ◼   ► It is a difficult category.

01:11:41 ◼   ► Because I mean, really it's a non-Apple product.

01:11:43 ◼   ► Who cares about it?

01:11:44 ◼   ► Oh, Jason.

01:11:44 ◼   ► Well, look, look at what was nominated by the Upgradients.

01:11:52 ◼   ► I asked you.

01:11:52 ◼   ► The Nintendo Switch Lite is a cool product and the bridge keyboard is really cool.

01:11:55 ◼   ► The two in the middle I'm a little bit frustrated about because nobody's used either of these

01:11:59 ◼   ► things, but such is life.

01:12:00 ◼   ► So this time last year, I got a new product in my life that was not made by Apple.

01:12:07 ◼   ► New piece of hardware.

01:12:09 ◼   ► It has, uh, it has proven over the year to be useful throughout my house, except for

01:12:17 ◼   ► rooms that I don't let it go into.

01:12:18 ◼   ► It is, it's a product that, that, um, moves.

01:12:25 ◼   ► Well, it doesn't move me.

01:12:26 ◼   ► It literally moves itself.

01:12:27 ◼   ► It is, uh, it keeps its heart close to the ground because it's a vacuum cleaner.

01:12:33 ◼   ► I nominate for best non-Apple product, my Roomba.

01:12:37 ◼   ► Okay.

01:12:38 ◼   ► Now can I just confirm here?

01:12:40 ◼   ► Are we nominate your own personal Roomba or the Roomba line that you purchased?

01:12:45 ◼   ► Let's, let's say the, we'll just say the Roomba in general.

01:12:49 ◼   ► Roomba, yeah.

01:12:50 ◼   ► Robot, yeah.

01:12:51 ◼   ► Robot vacuum cleaners.

01:12:52 ◼   ► Cause I have one and I have seen the light.

01:12:54 ◼   ► I want to say Roomba.

01:12:55 ◼   ► We're going with Roomba cause we are also in the Roomba family.

01:12:58 ◼   ► So I don't want to give it to all robot vacuum cleaners because this is like one of those

01:13:02 ◼   ► holy war things.

01:13:02 ◼   ► So people tell you why you should buy the Xiaomi one instead.

01:13:05 ◼   ► So I want to go completely with Roomba, which I'm totally happy with because I love my Roomba.

01:13:10 ◼   ► His name's Robbie and we love Roomba.

01:13:12 ◼   ► Jason, shouldn't be a surprise to you or anybody else for my favorite non-Apple product this year.

01:13:18 ◼   ► Don't do it.

01:13:19 ◼   ► It is the Samsung Galaxy Fold.

01:13:21 ◼   ► Now I have more to say about the Galaxy Fold later on in this episode today.

01:13:26 ◼   ► I have a very distinct point that I need to make.

01:13:29 ◼   ► Worst gadget is coming up and tech screw up is coming up.

01:13:32 ◼   ► So there's lots of good categories for the Galaxy Fold.

01:13:35 ◼   ► You quiet your mouth.

01:13:37 ◼   ► The Samsung Galaxy Fold is a fantastic technology product.

01:13:42 ◼   ► It, for me, feels like the future, whether people want it or not.

01:13:47 ◼   ► It is such a fascinating thing to use.

01:13:50 ◼   ► I love it.

01:13:51 ◼   ► It's it.

01:13:52 ◼   ► People won't believe me when I say this, but it is an incredibly well-made thing.

01:13:57 ◼   ► It feels significant.

01:13:59 ◼   ► It is beautifully put together.

01:14:02 ◼   ► I love my Galaxy Fold and I think that it is a super exciting product,

01:14:06 ◼   ► but I'm not going to bother explaining any more to people that don't want to listen.

01:14:10 ◼   ► So I think we're going to go with the runners up being the Nintendo Switch Lite,

01:14:15 ◼   ► the Samsung Galaxy Fold and Roomba.

01:14:18 ◼   ► Let's hear it for the Roomba.

01:14:19 ◼   ► Good work Roomba.

01:14:21 ◼   ► And yeah, and now what I want to do is I want to cut to the Roomba.

01:14:25 ◼   ► Like now with the acceptance speech, here's the Roomba.

01:14:27 ◼   ► And it just makes up that whining noise that it makes.

01:14:29 ◼   ► Oh no, it could make the little doo doo doo doo noise, you know.

01:14:33 ◼   ► Yeah, please charge Roomba.

01:14:35 ◼   ► Oh no, Roomba is stuck.

01:14:37 ◼   ► Okay, let's move into our next category, which is for worst gadget or most disappointing technology of 2019.

01:14:46 ◼   ► 5.7% of the vote is iOS 13.

01:14:51 ◼   ► 9% of the vote is Google Pixel 4.

01:14:56 ◼   ► And I combined both the Samsung Galaxy Fold and foldables in general to 19% of the vote.

01:15:04 ◼   ► Now Jason, I would like to address something here because I'm frustrated at this

01:15:10 ◼   ► and I'm frustrated at the upgradience.

01:15:11 ◼   ► Oh, are you turning the chair around?

01:15:13 ◼   ► Are you having a serious talk with the upgradience now?

01:15:15 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:15:15 ◼   ► I've turned my hats going backwards and the chair's gone around and I'm sitting on the chair.

01:15:20 ◼   ► You gotta wrap with us a little bit, okay.

01:15:21 ◼   ► Now look, this is the wrong category for this vote.

01:15:25 ◼   ► Because these 19% of people, have they used these devices?

01:15:30 ◼   ► Because I think to be disappointed or to call something the worst gadget,

01:15:35 ◼   ► you have to have had some kind of experience with it, in my opinion.

01:15:38 ◼   ► And I genuinely believe that if you have used these devices,

01:15:43 ◼   ► you would not say that they are incredibly disappointing.

01:15:46 ◼   ► Now if we want to talk about favorite tech screw up for the Galaxy Fold, which you probably will,

01:15:50 ◼   ► like I am open to have that discussion because there's something really interesting to talk about in there.

01:15:55 ◼   ► But I won't accept the Galaxy Fold as the most disappointing technology this year.

01:16:00 ◼   ► I just won't accept it.

01:16:02 ◼   ► So that is the point that I'm making.

01:16:03 ◼   ► We can maybe come back to that in a little bit.

01:16:06 ◼   ► But I've now turned the chair back around again.

01:16:08 ◼   ► And Jason, do you want to tell me your nominations?

01:16:10 ◼   ► Wow, now that Dad has forbidden the choice of the upgradience.

01:16:14 ◼   ► I haven't forbidden it.

01:16:15 ◼   ► Dad has just told you that he's unhappy.

01:16:18 ◼   ► Okay.

01:16:19 ◼   ► I have two nominees because this is worst gadget slash most disappointing tech.

01:16:25 ◼   ► And I'm going to nominate one in each of those.

01:16:28 ◼   ► Okay.

01:16:30 ◼   ► Worst gadget.

01:16:31 ◼   ► And it doesn't make it better that there are now ads with the Muppets trying to get you to buy one.

01:16:40 ◼   ► Facebook makes a thing you stick in your house that has a camera and a microphone

01:16:45 ◼   ► so that you can talk to other people using Facebook.

01:16:49 ◼   ► It is called the Facebook port portal.

01:16:52 ◼   ► It is the worst gadget.

01:16:53 ◼   ► Do not allow hardware from Facebook in your house.

01:16:56 ◼   ► You already own a device that lets you do this.

01:16:59 ◼   ► Yes.

01:17:00 ◼   ► If you really want to talk to people, video chat, Facebook messenger, just use the Facebook

01:17:04 ◼   ► messenger app.

01:17:05 ◼   ► Like what, what does anybody need this hardware device for?

01:17:08 ◼   ► It's wild.

01:17:09 ◼   ► And to come from the least trustworthy company in the world.

01:17:13 ◼   ► Facebook.

01:17:14 ◼   ► Don't do it.

01:17:16 ◼   ► So that's worst gadget.

01:17:17 ◼   ► It might be, it might be, I don't know about the build quality.

01:17:21 ◼   ► I don't know about the video quality.

01:17:22 ◼   ► I don't care.

01:17:22 ◼   ► It's the worst gadget.

01:17:23 ◼   ► You should never buy it.

01:17:25 ◼   ► Most disappointing tech.

01:17:26 ◼   ► I'm going to say Mac catalyst because not necessarily entirely its own fault.

01:17:32 ◼   ► Although I think that we're all disappointed that it didn't seem to progress very much

01:17:36 ◼   ► from what Steve trout and Smith figured out about the one that was in Mojave.

01:17:40 ◼   ► Didn't seem to progress a lot.

01:17:43 ◼   ► Didn't get helped by the Rocky iOS 13 transition to mention one of the upgrading nominees.

01:17:50 ◼   ► That, uh, you know, we have, there are a lot fewer Mac catalyst apps than we thought there

01:17:56 ◼   ► would be.

01:17:56 ◼   ► I think part of that is because developers ended up spending a lot of time, uh, fixing,

01:18:01 ◼   ► addressing all the bugs in iOS 13, and then having to address the new features in iOS

01:18:05 ◼   ► 13 and catalyst is sort of like out there.

01:18:08 ◼   ► But I really thought that we would see a whole bunch of iOS apps embracing catalyst and going

01:18:13 ◼   ► to the Mac this fall.

01:18:15 ◼   ► And while there were some, there were not that many.

01:18:18 ◼   ► And I would say that is about as disappointing as, uh, as you could get.

01:18:23 ◼   ► My vote is for iOS 13 this year.

01:18:28 ◼   ► It was a nightmare.

01:18:30 ◼   ► It was just a nightmare disaster of an iOS release in new and interesting ways, right?

01:18:35 ◼   ► Like the iPhone comes out of iOS 13 on it, but it's not really available for all the

01:18:41 ◼   ► devices that should have iOS 13.

01:18:43 ◼   ► And if you update it to it, some terrible things may have happened to you.

01:18:46 ◼   ► So many features were pushed to later in the year and of what they shipped.

01:18:52 ◼   ► It was full of bugs and full of problems like iOS 13.

01:18:56 ◼   ► Still, we are at this point in the year where there are still features that have yet to

01:18:59 ◼   ► be released that were shown off in June.

01:19:02 ◼   ► It has been a very bad iOS release.

01:19:06 ◼   ► I am.

01:19:06 ◼   ► Yep.

01:19:07 ◼   ► And so like I'll say for the Google Pixel 4 is an interesting one for the worst gadget,

01:19:13 ◼   ► or most disappointing because it was a disappointing product.

01:19:16 ◼   ► Like it did not ship with a lot of the features people would have wanted to see.

01:19:19 ◼   ► Facebook portal, which was a runner up in 2018, but there have been new versions of it

01:19:26 ◼   ► this year.

01:19:26 ◼   ► It doesn't really matter.

01:19:27 ◼   ► It continues to be the worst gadget.

01:19:29 ◼   ► It continues to be very bad.

01:19:30 ◼   ► Don't buy it.

01:19:31 ◼   ► As long as it's being sold, don't buy it.

01:19:33 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:19:33 ◼   ► We could like, you know, the worst gadget award brought to you by Facebook portal.

01:19:37 ◼   ► Uh huh.

01:19:38 ◼   ► We just need a muppet.

01:19:39 ◼   ► I'm a little conflicted on this one, right?

01:19:41 ◼   ► Because I obviously I believe iOS 13 to be very disappointing, but I will also say that

01:19:47 ◼   ► Mac Catalyst is a really good nomination in this because it should have been so much more.

01:19:52 ◼   ► And, you know, I think the fault lies on Apple with this one, but I think they basically

01:19:58 ◼   ► torpedoed it themselves with the announcement of Swift UI, which even makes it even more

01:20:03 ◼   ► disappointing.

01:20:04 ◼   ► So where do you want to go with this one, Jason?

01:20:06 ◼   ► Um, well, I, I just, as we were getting here, I realized I should have Mac Catalyst in this

01:20:12 ◼   ► list and I got to say as much as I enjoy kicking Facebook, um, and I agree that iOS 13 had

01:20:21 ◼   ► problems.

01:20:21 ◼   ► I feel like there is not a better, you will not find a better example of a disappointment

01:20:26 ◼   ► this year technologically than Mac Catalyst.

01:20:29 ◼   ► So I think we should give it to Mac Catalyst.

01:20:31 ◼   ► The runners up for the worst gadget on most disappointing technology of 2019 is two time

01:20:37 ◼   ► runner up Facebook portal, iOS 13 and the winner of the most disappointing technology

01:20:43 ◼   ► this year is Mac Catalyst.

01:20:45 ◼   ► I think it makes, it's a very good pick and like you, I'm surprised I didn't think of

01:20:50 ◼   ► it, but maybe that's the point, right?

01:20:52 ◼   ► We didn't even think of it because Catalyst kind of whimpered its way through the year.

01:20:58 ◼   ► Like, yeah, it was set up to be big and then both in its implementation and in the fact

01:21:04 ◼   ► that Apple took all of the attention and put it on Swift UI, um, thereby making us all

01:21:09 ◼   ► wonder kind of like what the point is of Mac Catalyst and if it's really something that

01:21:15 ◼   ► factors in their, uh, in, in their future plans.

01:21:18 ◼   ► It's, it's weird and disappointing.

01:21:21 ◼   ► All right.

01:21:22 ◼   ► So that comes to some, the end of some disappointments.

01:21:25 ◼   ► But we have some technology stories that we're going to be talking about in our next kind

01:21:31 ◼   ► of round of categories.

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01:23:10 ◼   ► Ready to move on, Jason?

01:23:14 ◼   ► Yes.

01:23:15 ◼   ► All right, so we now get into our favorite tech story of the year and the Upgradians

01:23:21 ◼   ► voted thusly with 7.2% of the vote is the Cybertruck.

01:23:27 ◼   ► And this includes not just its announcement, but also kind of some of the hilarious things

01:23:31 ◼   ► that happened during its introduction.

01:23:33 ◼   ► Made it a favorite tech story of many people.

01:23:34 ◼   ► 7.4% of the vote was the introduction of the 16 inch MacBook Pro and 13.2% of the vote

01:23:43 ◼   ► of favorite tech story of the year amongst the Upgradians is the introduction of the

01:23:48 ◼   ► Mac Pro, the Macintosh professional machine.

01:23:51 ◼   ► Jason, what is your vote of the most interesting or your favorite tech story this year?

01:23:57 ◼   ► I'm getting a little conceptual here, but my favorite tech story of the year is the

01:24:03 ◼   ► increase in mainstream understanding that privacy issues involving technology, especially

01:24:10 ◼   ► the privacy, personalized information that leaks from your smartphone, that becoming

01:24:17 ◼   ► mainstream.

01:24:17 ◼   ► Mainstream understanding, you saw presidential candidates talk about it.

01:24:22 ◼   ► There have been a bunch of stories in the mainstream press about trying to educate people

01:24:26 ◼   ► on just how leaky a smartphone can be in terms of your location and being able to plot you

01:24:32 ◼   ► and identify you and where you are on a map and what you do and tying it all together.

01:24:39 ◼   ► There's recently there was a New York Times opinion piece about it.

01:24:43 ◼   ► There was a New York Times investigation piece earlier.

01:24:46 ◼   ► We've seen with the GDPR stuff and with the new laws that are coming into effect for California,

01:24:51 ◼   ► a lot of ideas about who owns the data and data privacy and all of that.

01:24:56 ◼   ► This seems to be unlike something like net neutrality, which basically has always been

01:25:03 ◼   ► this esoteric thing that people don't really understand and it's hard to explain.

01:25:07 ◼   ► I feel like this is a tech issue that has finally hit the mainstream to a certain extent

01:25:14 ◼   ► and people are starting to wake up and hopefully be concerned about how their data is being

01:25:21 ◼   ► used.

01:25:22 ◼   ► And that's encouraging because if people don't care about it, nothing will ever happen.

01:25:27 ◼   ► And it is a big issue.

01:25:28 ◼   ► So I'm encouraged by that.

01:25:30 ◼   ► So that for me, just a broader understanding of all the privacy issues that are out there

01:25:35 ◼   ► is my story of the year.

01:25:37 ◼   ► My story of the year is the rise of foldable or dual screen phones.

01:25:44 ◼   ► Oh boy, yeah.

01:25:46 ◼   ► Galaxy Fold, Motorola, Razer, Surface Duo and Neo.

01:25:50 ◼   ► These are some of my favorite things to talk about this year because I think this is really

01:25:54 ◼   ► cool technology.

01:25:55 ◼   ► And I think that as the year has gone on, we've seen lots of unique ways of having stuff

01:26:02 ◼   ► like this.

01:26:02 ◼   ► I mean, this also comes into the fact that there has been controversy around these devices,

01:26:06 ◼   ► right?

01:26:06 ◼   ► Like I really enjoyed the Samsung Galaxy Folds all going kaput when they were first shown

01:26:13 ◼   ► out to reviewers.

01:26:14 ◼   ► I think it's been a really interesting trend of this year of watching how multiple companies

01:26:18 ◼   ► have been approaching this, including the Microsoft devices, the Duo and Neo, which

01:26:22 ◼   ► I'm also really excited about.

01:26:24 ◼   ► That is just another way of doing this type of idea.

01:26:29 ◼   ► It's slightly different, right?

01:26:30 ◼   ► They're not foldables in that way.

01:26:31 ◼   ► They're dual screens.

01:26:32 ◼   ► But the idea of taking a device and doing something to it to give you more or less screen

01:26:38 ◼   ► real estate, I think is a really interesting thing that's happened this year.

01:26:41 ◼   ► So we have three very different options here.

01:26:45 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:26:46 ◼   ► So we have the Mac Pro, understanding of privacy and foldable phones.

01:26:51 ◼   ► I like your pick quite a lot.

01:26:59 ◼   ► I think that it is an important thing and it has definitely been something that's been

01:27:03 ◼   ► building over the last couple of years.

01:27:05 ◼   ► But again, it's like a fever pitch type stuff this year, right?

01:27:10 ◼   ► Like people are getting it more, you're seeing it more.

01:27:12 ◼   ► And hopefully will be the beginning of people thinking about their privacy more.

01:27:18 ◼   ► So I'm totally happy to give the idea of mainstream privacy issues.

01:27:24 ◼   ► The technology stuff is the winner of this category.

01:27:28 ◼   ► Do you agree?

01:27:29 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:27:30 ◼   ► Great.

01:27:31 ◼   ► Thank you.

01:27:31 ◼   ► So the winner of the favorite tech story of 2019 is the understanding of technology privacy.

01:27:38 ◼   ► I think we'll call it that.

01:27:39 ◼   ► How does that sound?

01:27:39 ◼   ► Okay.

01:27:40 ◼   ► Sounds great.

01:27:41 ◼   ► This is a big picture.

01:27:41 ◼   ► This winner is usually that, right?

01:27:44 ◼   ► Yes.

01:27:44 ◼   ► It's usually something like that.

01:27:45 ◼   ► It should be a trend.

01:27:47 ◼   ► If not, there's like some very specific thing which could have happened.

01:27:52 ◼   ► Last year's was Apple spoiling the September bad URLs.

01:27:57 ◼   ► But like, which is great.

01:27:59 ◼   ► But the year before that was overreaching smartphones, like the essential phone and

01:28:03 ◼   ► the red hydrogen one, which history proved you right on.

01:28:06 ◼   ► Both of those phones are now dead because it just didn't work.

01:28:10 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:28:11 ◼   ► They're bad ideas.

01:28:13 ◼   ► One of my favorite categories is the favorite tech screw up of the year.

01:28:18 ◼   ► 8.2% of the gradients votes is just the word Facebook.

01:28:23 ◼   ► Well.

01:28:27 ◼   ► They continue to screw up.

01:28:28 ◼   ► Nothing specific.

01:28:29 ◼   ► Last year's winner, by the way, Facebook.

01:28:32 ◼   ► Yep.

01:28:32 ◼   ► Actually last year's winner was AirPower, wasn't it?

01:28:37 ◼   ► No, AirPower won the most disappointing tech worst gadget category.

01:28:41 ◼   ► Ah, yes.

01:28:42 ◼   ► Tech screw up was Facebook privacy scandals.

01:28:44 ◼   ► That was more specific last time.

01:28:47 ◼   ► This year is just Facebook.

01:28:49 ◼   ► Facebook.

01:28:49 ◼   ► 8.2%.

01:28:50 ◼   ► 16.2% was when the windows smashed during the Cybertruck presentation.

01:28:57 ◼   ► Which was a terrible screw up.

01:28:59 ◼   ► It's a classic moment.

01:29:00 ◼   ► But the obvious winner of the upgradings vote at 24.9% is the Samsung Galaxy Fold,

01:29:07 ◼   ► when all of the phones broke that were given out to press reviews.

01:29:12 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:29:12 ◼   ► So this is my nomination as well.

01:29:14 ◼   ► So I'm in line with the upgradings here.

01:29:16 ◼   ► The press rollout.

01:29:18 ◼   ► So now you have a Samsung Galaxy Fold.

01:29:21 ◼   ► You nominated it for best not ample product.

01:29:26 ◼   ► I am going to be specific here because I haven't used it and say my favorite text group of the

01:29:31 ◼   ► year was the press rollout for the Samsung Galaxy Fold where Samsung had a product that was brand

01:29:37 ◼   ► new and all eyes are on them.

01:29:39 ◼   ► Yep.

01:29:39 ◼   ► And it was not ready.

01:29:43 ◼   ► It was an absolute failure in a myriad of different ways.

01:29:46 ◼   ► It seems to have not been properly tested,

01:29:50 ◼   ► but instead just shipped to professional technology reviewers who immediately broke it for lots

01:29:58 ◼   ► of reasons that are not acceptable, like using it and it broke.

01:30:04 ◼   ► And you have to ask yourself, why did they not test that?

01:30:07 ◼   ► How did they fail to test it?

01:30:09 ◼   ► And why would you send something you hadn't tested out to the press to the point where

01:30:13 ◼   ► press is writing all the stories about how it breaks.

01:30:15 ◼   ► They have to take it back.

01:30:16 ◼   ► It gets pulled off sale.

01:30:17 ◼   ► It's not, it's no longer going to be sold.

01:30:20 ◼   ► There's no date.

01:30:21 ◼   ► They have to redesign parts of the phone and then put it back out there.

01:30:25 ◼   ► And the phone that you've got is actually redesigned from what the reviewers got because

01:30:30 ◼   ► it wasn't ready.

01:30:32 ◼   ► And how do you do that?

01:30:34 ◼   ► Just, it is a spectacular screw up.

01:30:37 ◼   ► And I don't know, you know, the combination, a truly unique combination of arrogance and

01:30:44 ◼   ► cluelessness that has to go into something like that happening.

01:30:47 ◼   ► It was spectacular.

01:30:48 ◼   ► Breathtaking.

01:30:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:30:49 ◼   ► It was purely because I think they were trying to rush to beat Huawei, but Samsung was so

01:30:55 ◼   ► stupid in doing that because the Huawei phone has still yet to come out outside of China

01:31:00 ◼   ► because it is plagued with so many more potentials to break because the screen folds on the outside.

01:31:07 ◼   ► So it's way more likely to get damaged.

01:31:10 ◼   ► Mountain fold?

01:31:11 ◼   ► Is that right?

01:31:12 ◼   ► That was the mountain fold.

01:31:13 ◼   ► Yes.

01:31:13 ◼   ► Congratulations, Jason.

01:31:14 ◼   ► You remember.

01:31:15 ◼   ► Not the valley fold.

01:31:16 ◼   ► Not the valley fold.

01:31:16 ◼   ► I am going to say that my favorite technology screw up was AirPower because this was the

01:31:25 ◼   ► year that AirPower was committed to being dead.

01:31:28 ◼   ► Officially killed.

01:31:29 ◼   ► And I just think that this was just stupid of Apple.

01:31:34 ◼   ► They just really messed this one up big time.

01:31:36 ◼   ► I think it was just a...

01:31:38 ◼   ► They never should have announced it and then they shouldn't have left it just being this

01:31:43 ◼   ► thing that would be referenced.

01:31:44 ◼   ► And then it was like people digging through, "Ah, but it's referenced in this guide printed

01:31:48 ◼   ► in this phone."

01:31:49 ◼   ► Obviously they were holding out hope that they were going to be able to turn it around

01:31:52 ◼   ► until they finally killed it.

01:31:53 ◼   ► What they should have done was announced it and never spoke about it until they killed

01:31:57 ◼   ► it.

01:31:57 ◼   ► But not only did they announce it way too soon, they kept referencing it all over the

01:32:01 ◼   ► place thinking that it was definitely coming out.

01:32:03 ◼   ► And then they had to just say, "Oh no, sorry.

01:32:06 ◼   ► Not only do we not have this product, there's nothing like it."

01:32:09 ◼   ► And buy this one from Mophie, I guess.

01:32:12 ◼   ► But the best text grow up this year is the Samsung Galaxy Fold press rollout.

01:32:17 ◼   ► It was an absolute nightmare.

01:32:19 ◼   ► So I am totally happy to give that as the winner of the favorite text grow up of the

01:32:26 ◼   ► year is the Samsung Galaxy Fold.

01:32:28 ◼   ► With the, I'm going to say, runner up of AirPower.

01:32:32 ◼   ► All right, Jason, moving on to our most life-changing hardware purchase that has entered our life

01:32:41 ◼   ► this year.

01:32:42 ◼   ► The Upgradients voted thusly.

01:32:44 ◼   ► 7.5% is for AirPods.

01:32:47 ◼   ► 11.5% is for the Apple Watch.

01:32:50 ◼   ► And at 12.6% is for AirPods Pro.

01:32:53 ◼   ► Pretty good.

01:32:56 ◼   ► Yeah, basically for this one, it was like Apple Watch people were voting like series

01:33:03 ◼   ► four, series five.

01:33:04 ◼   ► I just lumped them all in together.

01:33:05 ◼   ► That's the right thing to do.

01:33:06 ◼   ► That made the most sense because I don't think really for you to have your life changed by

01:33:10 ◼   ► an Apple Watch, it doesn't necessarily have to be one model or another, right?

01:33:14 ◼   ► Like it is kind of just the idea of what this product can do for you.

01:33:17 ◼   ► But of course, we now have two AirPods in the nominations here.

01:33:23 ◼   ► What did you go for?

01:33:25 ◼   ► I, my most life-changing hardware of the year, I decided, not the Roomba.

01:33:33 ◼   ► We already said we love the Roomba.

01:33:37 ◼   ► The smart lock, the Yale Assure smart lock that I installed earlier this year.

01:33:40 ◼   ► I was a real smart lock skeptic.

01:33:44 ◼   ► Like seriously, like why would you get one?

01:33:47 ◼   ► And then I got one for some very particular reasons and it's great.

01:33:53 ◼   ► It's not perfect, but by replacing the deadbolt with a smart lock, not only do I have a keypad

01:33:59 ◼   ► that you can just enter in a code and come and go and it's perfectly reasonable, but,

01:34:05 ◼   ► you know, it is a smart, so yeah, it can be tied into my home automation.

01:34:09 ◼   ► Mostly the feature that I use is not quite a homekit feature.

01:34:13 ◼   ► It's a Bluetooth proximity feature where I'm walking up to my door and it recognizes that

01:34:19 ◼   ► my phone is back.

01:34:20 ◼   ► It has been gone and now it's back and it unlocks the door.

01:34:23 ◼   ► And that's pretty cool when you've got, you know, your, your arms are full of groceries

01:34:27 ◼   ► and you walk up to the door and it automatically unlocks for you.

01:34:30 ◼   ► That's really nice too.

01:34:32 ◼   ► So that has been a pleasant, uh, positive life-changing experience.

01:34:37 ◼   ► I am going to nominate the AirPods Pro in this because being able to control outside

01:34:45 ◼   ► outside noise at my whim, right?

01:34:48 ◼   ► When in environments where maybe I want to hear less noise, like on a plane, being able

01:34:52 ◼   ► to do that with something that's so small and just sits in my ears and is comfortable

01:34:56 ◼   ► for me, uh, it's really made a huge difference on my life over the last few months.

01:35:00 ◼   ► And I absolutely love this product for that reason.

01:35:03 ◼   ► Well, it sounds like that's, we've got our winner.

01:35:06 ◼   ► Yeah, we will put Jason's smart, uh, smart lock, uh, as the runner up.

01:35:12 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:35:12 ◼   ► And I'm going to call this, we will officially call this Jason's smart lock because, uh,

01:35:17 ◼   ► the, because I think it's fun to refer back to what is one of my favorite nominations,

01:35:24 ◼   ► which in 2014, the winner of this category was just Jason's daughter's iPhone, which

01:35:29 ◼   ► I think is just hilarious, right?

01:35:31 ◼   ► Like it was just like very specific.

01:35:33 ◼   ► So we will call this Jason's smart lock as the runner up for most life changing hardware.

01:35:37 ◼   ► But the AirPods Pro is the winner of this category because they are really just a fantastic,

01:35:43 ◼   ► fantastic product.

01:35:44 ◼   ► So what about that, Jason?

01:35:46 ◼   ► The AirPods Pro has won two categories.

01:35:49 ◼   ► Well, that seems, seems about right.

01:35:52 ◼   ► They are really great.

01:35:53 ◼   ► Like they are really great, but that might be the first time that's ever happened in

01:35:57 ◼   ► the upgrade is though that something has won two categories in the same year, two separate

01:36:03 ◼   ► categories.

01:36:03 ◼   ► It's kind of quite impressive.

01:36:04 ◼   ► All right.

01:36:06 ◼   ► We're going to move into the final round of winners, which I think for a lot of people

01:36:13 ◼   ► is like the favorite categories, which is the podcast related categories, favorite tech

01:36:18 ◼   ► podcast, favorite non-tech podcast and favorite podcast newcomer to round out the 2019

01:36:25 ◼   ► upgrade is awards.

01:36:26 ◼   ► But before we do that, let me thank our final sponsor of this episode.

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01:37:25 ◼   ► And that's it for this video.

01:37:54 ◼   ► Are you ready, Jason, to get into our final set here?

01:37:57 ◼   ► How can one ever be ready, truly?

01:38:01 ◼   ► By having your picks in advance, which we all did.

01:38:05 ◼   ► So the Upgradians for the favorite tech podcast of the year voted thusly with 9.9% of the

01:38:13 ◼   ► vote.

01:38:14 ◼   ► The talk show with Jon Gruber.

01:38:15 ◼   ► 15.4% of the vote is this very show, Upgrade.

01:38:20 ◼   ► I still maintain that, of course, everybody, every Upgradient would vote for Upgrade, but

01:38:24 ◼   ► they may be, well, they know we wouldn't give the Upgradient award to ourselves.

01:38:27 ◼   ► I hope so.

01:38:28 ◼   ► Otherwise, it's really sad that our listeners don't pick us.

01:38:31 ◼   ► But it would be 100% of the vote, Jason, I'm sure of it.

01:38:34 ◼   ► And with 23.4% of the vote, last year's winner, Connected, which is a show that I do here

01:38:40 ◼   ► on Relay FM.

01:38:41 ◼   ► And we should note at this point, of course, the Accidental Tech podcast is the Lifetime

01:38:45 ◼   ► Achievement Award winner of this category.

01:38:47 ◼   ► I do not have a vote in this category for two reasons.

01:38:52 ◼   ► One, ATP is my favorite tech show and all of the other tech shows that I listen to are

01:38:56 ◼   ► on Relay FM.

01:38:57 ◼   ► And I don't feel right nominating a Relay FM show.

01:38:59 ◼   ► It just doesn't feel fair.

01:39:00 ◼   ► So I don't do it.

01:39:02 ◼   ► Jason, do you have any nominations this year?

01:39:04 ◼   ► I do.

01:39:05 ◼   ► I am going to nominate two shows that are, one of them is tech, one of them is arguably

01:39:14 ◼   ► tech, and I'm going to try to sneak it in.

01:39:15 ◼   ► So first off on Relay FM, Automators, which is a nice show with Rosemary and David about

01:39:25 ◼   ► automating things on computers.

01:39:27 ◼   ► I like it.

01:39:30 ◼   ► It's on Relay.

01:39:30 ◼   ► I like it a lot too.

01:39:31 ◼   ► Have you heard about it?

01:39:32 ◼   ► Very, just like it's a very specific focus in a show, but is executed well.

01:39:37 ◼   ► They have loads of like additional material that they publish of every episode as well

01:39:42 ◼   ► to help make it easy for you to adopt the automations that they're talking about.

01:39:46 ◼   ► It's really well made.

01:39:47 ◼   ► It's a great show on Relay FM.

01:39:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:39:49 ◼   ► And from the BBC, maybe you've heard of it.

01:39:53 ◼   ► It's 13 Minutes to the Moon, which was their documentary series about Apollo 11 and focusing,

01:40:02 ◼   ► because this was the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 for the moon landing.

01:40:06 ◼   ► And it focused on the 13 minutes of power descent from orbit to the lunar surface.

01:40:16 ◼   ► That was the concept, which as somebody who has a space podcast and tried to figure out

01:40:20 ◼   ► how to cover Apollo 11, I was very impressed with the angle that they came up with here.

01:40:24 ◼   ► And this is why I actually call it a technology podcast because so much of what's going on

01:40:28 ◼   ► in that 13 minutes, it's amazing from a human perspective, who's in the room, how they got

01:40:34 ◼   ► there, what their history is, how young so many of them are.

01:40:37 ◼   ► But for me, it's also a technology podcast because it really is about how that thing

01:40:44 ◼   ► was put together, how information got relayed, how the computer worked, which is if you've

01:40:50 ◼   ► ever read or heard anything about the Apollo computer, it's bananas how that thing was

01:40:58 ◼   ► made and how it worked and what the interface was.

01:41:02 ◼   ► And there's in fact, a whole episode, I believe about the Apollo guidance computer.

01:41:06 ◼   ► That's a fantastic episode.

01:41:08 ◼   ► So those are my nominees, 13 minutes to the moon and automators.

01:41:12 ◼   ► So what do we do with this whole category here?

01:41:16 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:41:18 ◼   ► I mean, I've given you a non-relay slightly out of our category.

01:41:25 ◼   ► Well, so here's the thing, Jason.

01:41:26 ◼   ► I won't vote for a relay FM show, but I would also love a relay FM show to win, especially

01:41:32 ◼   ► one that I'm on just saying, but I'm not going to be the person to commit that victory.

01:41:37 ◼   ► To put it over the top?

01:41:39 ◼   ► Boy, if we chose connected, it wouldn't be the lifetime winner, would it?

01:41:43 ◼   ► No.

01:41:44 ◼   ► So, you know, it would be two years in a row.

01:41:46 ◼   ► The, well, I'm serious.

01:41:52 ◼   ► I think the BBC podcast was fantastic.

01:41:55 ◼   ► If you think that that's a reasonable tech podcast, or if I'm messing that up, you tell

01:42:00 ◼   ► me.

01:42:01 ◼   ► I think we have not specified what a tech podcast is, but I think that when we talk

01:42:11 ◼   ► about what we mean by tech podcast, I think we all mean this type of show that you were

01:42:18 ◼   ► doing right now.

01:42:19 ◼   ► Right?

01:42:21 ◼   ► Like, I think that's the kind of thing we're thinking about.

01:42:25 ◼   ► I haven't listened to 13 Minutes to the Moon, but I expect it is not like our show.

01:42:30 ◼   ► It is not like our show.

01:42:31 ◼   ► Like a couple of individuals talking about something to do with technology.

01:42:35 ◼   ► Definitely not.

01:42:35 ◼   ► And I consider myself a purist in what I think a technology podcast to be and would feel

01:42:47 ◼   ► strange not giving it to one of the other four shows mentioned here.

01:42:53 ◼   ► All right.

01:42:55 ◼   ► And while Zach mentions that Welcome to Macintosh is not a show like ours, which I agree with,

01:43:01 ◼   ► but focuses on things so specific to the stuff that we talk about, I feel like it's maybe

01:43:08 ◼   ► the furthest we would take that step outside.

01:43:10 ◼   ► Right?

01:43:11 ◼   ► Like still talking about Macintosh computers, still has people like Jason Snell on episodes.

01:43:16 ◼   ► Right?

01:43:16 ◼   ► Like feels like it is a stretch outside where 13 Minutes to the Moon could be argued maybe

01:43:23 ◼   ► is like a history technology podcast, which is maybe a slightly different thing would

01:43:27 ◼   ► maybe fit really well.

01:43:29 ◼   ► And it is definitely okay.

01:43:30 ◼   ► So like basically I feel like we're at a point here where we're kind of like maybe as usual

01:43:35 ◼   ► on this show, potentially redefining what we think of in the category.

01:43:39 ◼   ► But I feel like the previous winners in this category fit a type of show.

01:43:45 ◼   ► That we make.

01:43:48 ◼   ► Right.

01:43:49 ◼   ► But if we go on long enough with those definitions, then we're just going to very slowly induct

01:43:54 ◼   ► every show from relay or by people we know to the Hall of Fame.

01:43:57 ◼   ► Exactly.

01:43:58 ◼   ► Which is why I'm saying like we can I'm just saying like when I approach this category,

01:44:03 ◼   ► that's what I'm thinking of, but it doesn't mean it has to stay that way.

01:44:05 ◼   ► But then we know that we're opening it up a little bit more, which is also fine.

01:44:12 ◼   ► I would be okay opening it up a little bit more.

01:44:15 ◼   ► Then let's do it.

01:44:15 ◼   ► Okay.

01:44:17 ◼   ► 13 minutes to the moon is the winner of the favorite tech podcast.

01:44:19 ◼   ► Congratulations to that gritty up and coming producer.

01:44:23 ◼   ► Oh don't because you're going to make me change my mind if you finish that sentence because

01:44:26 ◼   ► you know I don't like that's making it worse for me to be like, oh, what's the best tech

01:44:30 ◼   ► podcast of the year?

01:44:31 ◼   ► It was the BBC.

01:44:32 ◼   ► I'm changing my mind on this one because this kind of thing annoys me.

01:44:35 ◼   ► Actually, do you know what, Jason?

01:44:37 ◼   ► We're tearing up the book because I have a problem with this now.

01:44:41 ◼   ► We have now like the as I finish that sentence because we're like approaching the end of the

01:44:46 ◼   ► decade, right?

01:44:46 ◼   ► So all these articles are being written and people are talking about like what's the best

01:44:51 ◼   ► technology podcast of the year and like the most probably some of the most popular technology

01:44:56 ◼   ► podcasts are ignored because they're not made by a big company potentially based in New

01:45:01 ◼   ► York City or is the BBC based in New York City?

01:45:05 ◼   ► I had no idea.

01:45:06 ◼   ► I am being very specific about what I'm talking about.

01:45:08 ◼   ► Anyway, congratulations to the automators.

01:45:11 ◼   ► We're going to give it to automators and 30 minutes to the moon is a great runner up,

01:45:17 ◼   ► but I cannot do it.

01:45:19 ◼   ► I can't bring myself to do it because I am a purist connected will take the other running

01:45:26 ◼   ► up position.

01:45:27 ◼   ► So automators, congratulations.

01:45:29 ◼   ► You are the favorite tech podcast of the year.

01:45:32 ◼   ► Do you get where I'm coming from with that though?

01:45:36 ◼   ► I do.

01:45:37 ◼   ► Okay.

01:45:39 ◼   ► Let's talk about our favorite non tech podcast of the year.

01:45:41 ◼   ► The Upgrading is voted as such with 3.4% of the vote is reconcilable differences with

01:45:47 ◼   ► 7% of the vote is hello internet and 18.1% of the vote goes to Dubai Friday.

01:45:54 ◼   ► What have you got Jason?

01:45:56 ◼   ► Dubai Friday, by the way, last year's winner in this category sound like one of those one

01:45:59 ◼   ► of those people who talks while the people are coming up up to the stage on the Oscars.

01:46:03 ◼   ► That's what that sounded like to me.

01:46:04 ◼   ► Dubai Friday is a previous nominee in this category.

01:46:07 ◼   ► Yep.

01:46:08 ◼   ► The flophouse is a lifetime achievement winner.

01:46:10 ◼   ► Well, you know, I know how you don't like the optics of awarding podcasts made by giant

01:46:19 ◼   ► media entities.

01:46:20 ◼   ► And that's why my favorite non tech podcast of the year was HBO's Chernobyl podcast.

01:46:27 ◼   ► I don't care about that in general.

01:46:29 ◼   ► It's purely tech podcast.

01:46:31 ◼   ► We're talking about favorite non tech podcast last year.

01:46:33 ◼   ► The good was it?

01:46:34 ◼   ► No, the good place podcast was a runner up right in last year.

01:46:37 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:46:38 ◼   ► And it was the newcomer.

01:46:39 ◼   ► It was the newcomer winner, but yes.

01:46:40 ◼   ► It's a newcomer award.

01:46:41 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:46:42 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:46:42 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:46:43 ◼   ► So I don't think it's going to win, but it was probably my favorite new favorite non tech

01:46:51 ◼   ► podcast this year.

01:46:52 ◼   ► I for those who haven't.

01:46:54 ◼   ► So it was on my list Chernobyl, one of my top shows of the year as a mini series.

01:46:58 ◼   ► And the Chernobyl podcast was Peter Sagal from NPR talking to Craig Mazin, who's the co-host

01:47:04 ◼   ► of the script notes podcast with John August.

01:47:06 ◼   ► So you may have known him from that.

01:47:08 ◼   ► He wrote Chernobyl.

01:47:09 ◼   ► All of it was the executive producer of it.

01:47:12 ◼   ► And they went through episode by episode and talked about sort of the process and what

01:47:16 ◼   ► went into making it and what went into writing it.

01:47:18 ◼   ► And it was like the good place podcast.

01:47:21 ◼   ► It was a really interesting drill down.

01:47:25 ◼   ► It was not a marketing vehicle.

01:47:28 ◼   ► And I really appreciate that.

01:47:29 ◼   ► And it was, that's a kind of show with the, the trying to depict a historical event that

01:47:34 ◼   ► getting the understanding of why it was made the way it was, is, uh, it was really rewarding.

01:47:40 ◼   ► So I thought they did a great job with that one.

01:47:42 ◼   ► I didn't see the show, didn't listen to the podcast.

01:47:45 ◼   ► So I don't really have anything to say on this one.

01:47:48 ◼   ► That's okay.

01:47:49 ◼   ► Cause you're going to agree with the upgradians.

01:47:50 ◼   ► Aren't you?

01:47:51 ◼   ► Well, I am because yeah, Dubai Friday, like it's my favorite show.

01:47:54 ◼   ► So I love Dubai Friday.

01:47:57 ◼   ► It's hilarious.

01:47:58 ◼   ► And I learned things about American politics from it.

01:48:02 ◼   ► So, uh, I really enjoy it.

01:48:04 ◼   ► It's very well made and they do a lot of things to Dubai fried.

01:48:09 ◼   ► I get a similar feeling about stick me on this one about Dubai Friday as I get about

01:48:15 ◼   ► our show, because one of the things I love about Dubai Friday, you have to stick me on

01:48:19 ◼   ► this one of the things I love about Dubai Friday is they are very creative in the production.

01:48:26 ◼   ► Is this a backdoor way of announcing that our co-host for 2020 is Alexandra Elizabeth

01:48:31 ◼   ► Cox? No, cause that would be a surprise to me.

01:48:33 ◼   ► It would be a surprise to everyone.

01:48:35 ◼   ► Love Alex, but this is our show.

01:48:37 ◼   ► But okay.

01:48:38 ◼   ► But what I love about Dubai Friday is they very frequently go outside of what you expect

01:48:44 ◼   ► them to do and do something weird and fun.

01:48:46 ◼   ► And I think we do that a lot.

01:48:48 ◼   ► Right?

01:48:48 ◼   ► So like, I think one of the reasons I love Dubai Friday is because it is a show that

01:48:54 ◼   ► is very creative and they take lots of twists and turns when making the show.

01:48:58 ◼   ► And I think we do that.

01:48:59 ◼   ► Like the last two episodes of the year, right?

01:49:02 ◼   ► Like the entire summer and the drafts, right?

01:49:05 ◼   ► Like I think we do lots of weird and wonderful creative things, which is why I love this

01:49:09 ◼   ► show.

01:49:10 ◼   ► And it's one of the things I love about Dubai Friday as well.

01:49:13 ◼   ► So upgrade is the winner of favorite non tech.

01:49:15 ◼   ► No, no, no.

01:49:17 ◼   ► That's not what I'm saying.

01:49:18 ◼   ► So I have no skin in the game when it comes to the Chernobyl podcast.

01:49:23 ◼   ► No, Dubai Friday is, uh, it's going to be a two time winner and that's, uh, that's exciting

01:49:29 ◼   ► because it's on the verge of being kicked out of the category for being too good.

01:49:32 ◼   ► It might not be a bad thing to try and get it kicked out because the Dubai Friday audience

01:49:38 ◼   ► mobilize.

01:49:39 ◼   ► Uh, I had to like kick them into gear a little bit.

01:49:42 ◼   ► Jason's.

01:49:43 ◼   ► This is some of the stuff that we maybe don't know about.

01:49:45 ◼   ► Do you want to hear some, some salacious information about this year?

01:49:49 ◼   ► I do.

01:49:49 ◼   ► The Dubai Friday discord is the thing that exists for patrons and they mobilize to vote

01:49:55 ◼   ► for Dubai Friday.

01:49:56 ◼   ► And I had to come in and establish some rules with the Dubai Friday audience because I thought

01:50:02 ◼   ► you were going to say Dubai Friday ins and that was going to be great.

01:50:05 ◼   ► That would be a great word.

01:50:06 ◼   ► The Dubai audience.

01:50:07 ◼   ► And I had to go in and basically said to them that they needed to, uh, effectively they

01:50:12 ◼   ► voted for Dubai Friday in every category.

01:50:15 ◼   ► Which I wasn't happy with because it doesn't make any sense and causes more work for me

01:50:22 ◼   ► because I have to remove the votes.

01:50:25 ◼   ► Right.

01:50:25 ◼   ► Yes.

01:50:26 ◼   ► When going through.

01:50:27 ◼   ► So I had to go in there and say, okay, Dubai Friday ins, feel free to vote for Dubai Friday

01:50:33 ◼   ► as the favorite non tech podcast, but either just vote that or vote in every category as

01:50:38 ◼   ► well.

01:50:39 ◼   ► They listened to me.

01:50:39 ◼   ► I removed the incorrect votes and they started over and they did their thing.

01:50:45 ◼   ► And then they, they made the correct voting for Dubai Friday.

01:50:48 ◼   ► So I love this show.

01:50:50 ◼   ► The audience are very, uh, they're very engaged in the upgrade is, uh, because they want their

01:50:55 ◼   ► favorite show to win, which I can, I can definitely attest to.

01:50:58 ◼   ► And I'm pleased that they listened to me.

01:51:00 ◼   ► So that we are now.

01:51:03 ◼   ► So if we didn't already say, you know, podcast is a runner up and Dubai Friday is the winner

01:51:08 ◼   ► of the favorite non tech podcast of the year, making it two time winner, uh, in this category.

01:51:15 ◼   ► But Jason, a three time winner overall as one of the favorite podcast, newcomer in 2016.

01:51:22 ◼   ► So may make it Dubai Friday might end up with like the most wins of any property.

01:51:27 ◼   ► If it wins next year, cause it will have four total awards and three and will become lifetime

01:51:33 ◼   ► achievement.

01:51:33 ◼   ► There wouldn't that be an interesting factoid.

01:51:35 ◼   ► So Dubai Friday ins know what they need to do.

01:51:37 ◼   ► I guess, I guess so.

01:51:38 ◼   ► Final category of the evening is for the favorite podcast, newcomer, the upgrade ins voted as

01:51:46 ◼   ► as such with 6.5% is adapt from relay FM 9.9% is waveform, which is the MKBHD podcast.

01:51:57 ◼   ► And 17.7% is the podcast two headed goal hosted by Alex and Matt Cox.

01:52:03 ◼   ► You may understand what happened here as one of the reasons that this show is a 17.7%.

01:52:11 ◼   ► You know, we can talk about that.

01:52:14 ◼   ► Jason, would you like to tell me what your favorite podcast newcomer of the year is?

01:52:17 ◼   ► Well, everybody can just listen to what I said, uh, in the previous category, because

01:52:21 ◼   ► my favorite podcast newcomer was the Chernobyl podcast, which only existed, uh, in 2019.

01:52:27 ◼   ► So my, uh, I have two that I want to talk about and they are the top two winners for

01:52:32 ◼   ► the, uh, from the upgrade ins.

01:52:34 ◼   ► So waveform is MKBHD new tech show.

01:52:36 ◼   ► I think the show is still finding its place a little bit, which is why I didn't vote for

01:52:40 ◼   ► it as my favorite tech podcast.

01:52:42 ◼   ► Cause it isn't yet, but it's one of my favorite shows that came out in the last year.

01:52:46 ◼   ► I enjoy every episode, but they had a bit of a rocky start, uh, from kind of, they,

01:52:51 ◼   ► they had some tech issues, like funnily enough, they had to some like audio issues and they

01:52:56 ◼   ► were kind of like the, the hosts.

01:52:58 ◼   ► So it's MKBHD.

01:52:59 ◼   ► So Marques Brownlee and, uh, guy works with him, Andrew Magnolani, who is like helps him

01:53:05 ◼   ► with a bunch of, like, I think it's like, like basically he's right hand man in his

01:53:09 ◼   ► production of YouTube videos.

01:53:12 ◼   ► Uh, it has a really good mixture of tech topics.

01:53:14 ◼   ► They focus on a lot of stuff that like, that are not focused on, on the other shows that

01:53:18 ◼   ► I listened to because they're not solely Apple focused, but they also talk about technology

01:53:22 ◼   ► in many other areas.

01:53:24 ◼   ► And I really like it.

01:53:25 ◼   ► It branches out into some interesting places.

01:53:27 ◼   ► I've listened to every episode.

01:53:28 ◼   ► I've enjoyed every episode.

01:53:29 ◼   ► It is one of my favorite new shows of this year.

01:53:31 ◼   ► The other show that I really enjoy is Two-Headed Girl, uh, which is the show, which is voted

01:53:37 ◼   ► for by the upgrade ins.

01:53:39 ◼   ► So this is a show in which Alex and Matt Cox talk about a bunch of issues, but it's centered

01:53:44 ◼   ► around gender transition, um, from the, what is called FTM, female to male gender transition,

01:53:51 ◼   ► which Matt Cox has been going through over the last couple of years.

01:53:53 ◼   ► It is a very well produced show using, they've been recording for this show for like two

01:54:00 ◼   ► years, but it started this year.

01:54:02 ◼   ► So they have like all of these recordings that they've done over time, which is amazing,

01:54:07 ◼   ► especially in this one episode where they're talking about testosterone and how it can

01:54:11 ◼   ► change your voice.

01:54:12 ◼   ► And they have clips of Matt's voice over the years and how it's changed, which is just

01:54:17 ◼   ► a beautiful, like use of the medium.

01:54:20 ◼   ► Um, the theme of this show, the, the whole reason for this show existing, and it also

01:54:26 ◼   ► touches on other areas like mental health, but it's mostly focused around, uh, gender.

01:54:33 ◼   ► It is important to me because I, as a person want to better understand some of the struggles

01:54:38 ◼   ► that people in the LGBTQ community go through.

01:54:41 ◼   ► So I am able to be a person who can better empathize and not be stuck in the past.

01:54:47 ◼   ► And this show helps me with that.

01:54:49 ◼   ► Like this is something which is becoming more and more important today for good reason.

01:54:53 ◼   ► And I want to make sure that I can do my best to understand it.

01:54:57 ◼   ► And this show helps me with that.

01:54:59 ◼   ► And it's also very funny and heartwarming because it can be really interesting to hear

01:55:04 ◼   ► a married couple be tough on each other and kind of fight and also be cute together.

01:55:09 ◼   ► It is a really sometimes challenging, but sometimes heartwarming show, which is helping

01:55:15 ◼   ► me learn something.

01:55:16 ◼   ► And I think make me a better person, which is why it also gets the nomination from me,

01:55:21 ◼   ► Jason.

01:55:21 ◼   ► Sounds good.

01:55:22 ◼   ► Well, it's you and the Upgradients slash Dubai Fridays.

01:55:25 ◼   ► So that sounds like our winner.

01:55:28 ◼   ► So Two-Headed Girl is the winner of the 2019 favorite podcast newcomer with the Chernobyl

01:55:34 ◼   ► podcast always being the bridesmaid.

01:55:36 ◼   ► That's fine.

01:55:37 ◼   ► Into back to back.

01:55:38 ◼   ► This makes Alex Cox a formidable Upgradian, upgradey winner here.

01:55:45 ◼   ► Four.

01:55:46 ◼   ► Upgradier?

01:55:48 ◼   ► Upgradiest?

01:55:50 ◼   ► This is interesting, right?

01:55:51 ◼   ► Like, so Alex has taken home now four awards in total.

01:55:56 ◼   ► So I guess Alex is coming for Marco, right?

01:55:59 ◼   ► Because I guess Marco has six total, right?

01:56:04 ◼   ► With three ATP, three overcast.

01:56:06 ◼   ► And now Alex has four total for Two-Headed Girl, two for Dubai, and three total for Dubai

01:56:13 ◼   ► Friday, but in different categories.

01:56:15 ◼   ► So many statistics.

01:56:18 ◼   ► I know.

01:56:20 ◼   ► And the upgradey awards.

01:56:21 ◼   ► But that's what happens when you have been doing something for six years.

01:56:25 ◼   ► That's right.

01:56:25 ◼   ► That's right.

01:56:26 ◼   ► That's why you were so excited with the first annual.

01:56:28 ◼   ► Because it kept going.

01:56:29 ◼   ► Also, shout out to our departed categories.

01:56:34 ◼   ► We retired favorite mic at the movies.