Solid State Podcast

Episode 145 - Did COVID kill gaming? (Oh, and we bought a Steam Machine...)

This week on the Solid State Podcast things get a little… real.
We know we talk about a lot of topics on this show, many of them relevant, timely technology stories and others… not so much. 
This week, it couldn’t get more relevant. It couldn’t be more timely. And it honestly couldn’t… suck much more either. 
See, one of our favorite corners of the industry, Gaming, is now long past a “state of flux”. You could be forgiven for describing more as in a state of free fall. 
That’s not to say money isn’t being made… have you seen Nintendo’s Balance Sheet lately? But not all is well in the digital village, and the stakes are getting higher almost daily for some of gamings biggest names. 
Studio upheavals, large scale layoffs, and fundamental near-tectonic shifts in how we buy, possess, and quote-unquote “own” our literal games are all changing in faster-than-real-time with genuinely no end in sight. 
Prices continue to shift in a direction only “positive” for the chip makers themselves, and at the end of the day this has not-so-quietly graduated form nuisance, to concern, to existential threat to the state of the game. 
Call me crazy, but picking up the physical cartridge of Goldeneye sitting next to me and slotting it satisfyingly into a Nintendo 64 has never felt more like comfort food than now.
As always, we hunt for the silver linings on this show. Let’s see where this one is hiding… 

Episode 144 - The one where John buys a Commodore 64...

This week on the Solid State Podcast we… take a bit of a breather. 
No, not from talking far too quickly. That would be inconceivable. 
It’s just that we get the feeling sometimes that that world gets entirely too serious around us (because it is), and in this crazy land-of-tech we employ ourselves in… we need to have some room for fun too…
We couldn’t think of any better way than a good old fashioned palette cleanser… no big meaty topic. No world altering paradigm shifts. And okay, maybe just one soap box opportunity for me to rail on Social Media and all that it’s, umm, “done” for us. 
Everything from next-gen smart glasses to Commodore 64’s and flip phones are on deck for this one. I even return to form and buy crap on the show I definitely don’t need, desperately want, and am not compulsively refreshing a shipping status screen until I receive. 
This is Solid State… are you all that surprised? 

Episode 143 - We're using Siri AI... (Apple WWDC 2026 recap)

This week on the Solid State Podcast, we mix everyone’s “favorite” digital assistant with everyone’s… umm… “favorite” emerging technology and get… literally the best version of it we’ve seen yet? 
Genuinely dear listener, I’m as shocked as you are. My struggles with all-things-Siri through the years have been well documented on not one but two different podcasts for over a decade, and the hilarious part is, if you could dig up some of those ancient episodes you’d find the problems then were, well, basically identical to the problems that persist just a week ago. Say exactly the right thing, exactly the right way, in exactly the right tone and… “magic” would happen… Deviate from that proven path one percent, and somehow I turned on the porch lights at my moms house when all I wanted to do was set a freakin timer…
But then, last week, at WWDC Apple did… exactly what we all expected them to do. AI, ahem, I mean “Apple Intelligence”… took the main stage in a very real way. Plugged into dear old Siri and you get… yep, you guessed it… Siri AI……
That part, again, wasn’t all that interesting. We’ve seen it coming for nearly a year. The Google / Gemini partnership was well documented. The things we needed it to do… already exist, yeah, on Gemini. 
No, where things really get interesting is… just days later as the phones and devices started cooling down from the somethings 30GB beta update… it all (okay, mostly)… works……
Does it death spiral and spin until a crash sometimes? Of course. Can it do my laundry for me? Not any better than Samsung’s million dollar robots can. Does Siri actually do a half-decent job of seeming to understand what I’m asking, what I need, and actually be able to “do the thing”? A shocking amount of the time…
I’m not about to say it was “worth the wait”, the jury is still very much out on that one. But is a promise dating back nearly 15 years on the verge of being realized? Let’s find out…

Episode 142 - Microsoft Build vs Apple WWDC 2026 (Oh, and go play Guild Wars)

Event Season in tech is one of my favorite times of year for oh so many reasons… not the least of which is that, you know, we have no shortage of things to talk about… (as if that’s ever been a problem around here)
And then, even buried in the middle of said “Season”, there’s an even better overlap… a single week where one big conference has just happened and another one is just mere hours away. The sweet, sweet collision of what we “got” agains what we’re still hopeful to “get”. This, deal listener, is one of those weeks. 
You see Microsoft just wrapped up its annual Build conference, and for the first time in what feels like too many years it was… about building things. You know, Developers. The people around the globe that spend countless hours and risk their whole livelihood on the hope that their idea is the next one to take the market by storm. Microsoft (or any tech player) is nothing without them, and similarly we wouldn’t have, for example, Windows Developers if we didn’t have… Windows. You can argue eternally about which is of greater impact to the eventual end user or customer, but in the end… we need them both. And Microsoft took the stage this year and laid out its vision for what collaboration with said Developers is going to look like. 
Agents? Come and get ‘em. Linux tools in Windows? More and more by the year. Copilot anyone? That one was seemingly, umm, “absent” from the docket and that… might not be a bad thing. 
Oh, and Microsoft also announced the two most powerful (and most certainly expensive) Surface devices ever… no bid deal. 
Whew… when people say “that’s a tough act to follow”, it feels like they’re talking about this very event. But here we are, on none other than Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference keynote day to say exactly that. The, uhh, RE-return of AI-empowered Siri, fresh coats of paint on every single one of Apple’s Operating Systems, and likewise a room full of very itchy developers who all have the same burning question… where do we go from here? 
With hours still to go, we stay planted firmly in “what if” territory for WWDC… but who knows… maybe we got a couple right? Let’s find out…

Episode 141 - Google I/O 2026 (Oh, and go watch Star Wars)

Technology, by its very nature, is in a constant state of change. What was yesterday’s banner new product or feature sure to take the world by storm is today’s soon-forgotten commodity that we-the-user already take for granted. It’s the way of things. 
That said, every so often, the change is so big, so foundational, and so… irreversible… it hits just a little bit different. 
That level of change, while still very much in-progress, felt like the inescapable truth of Google I/O this year. 
Search, while still very much at the forefront, continues to evolve in front of our eyes from an answer-machine to an AI-driven buddy here to help you allegedly solve all the mysteries of the Universe. Shopping need no longer be confined to the four digital walls of a single online storefront, and instead span the very web itself with one Shopping Cart to rule them all. AI itself shouldn’t just be the tool of the tech-centric nerd, rather front and center to help grandma turn her hand-written recipe book into a vibe coded cooking app her whole family can enjoy… 
At least, this is what Google says (more loudly than ever), the moment is. 
Peer just underneath the surface though, and it’s so, so much bigger than even any of that. This isn’t a fight for market share, platform scale, or even Silicon Valley bragging rights. No, they would have you believe this is nothing more than a fight for survival. The survival of their companies, their mission, and perhaps even the human race itself. 
You know, because of shopping carts…
Listen, I couldn’t agree more… something about this messaging is… out of whack
The stakes seem misaligned with the message, and behind them the dollars seem misaligned with the payday. 
But, in the meantime, another I/O has come-and-gone… and with it, Google paints a future not of itself, but of its vision for the future of the web…  

Episode 140 - All I wanted was a Steam Controller...

This week on the Solid State Podcast, the only plan we could possibly be accused of having was… well none at all…
See if you haven’t noticed, the world is in a bit of a… state of flux right now. 
Need some RAM? Good luck. Does your product ship by boat through… certain parts of the world? Not right now it’s probably not. Oh and remember “Kyle”, the one helpful person you finally found at AT&T customer service? He’s been replaced by an AI “assistant” that apparently doesn’t realize the word “agent” has numerous meanings and doesn’t seem to understand that I don’t want to trade in my phone for a bottle of phosphoric acid…
So with everything seeming to change on the daily, where does that leave three podcasters other than to embrace the crazy and chart our course through… whatever the heck is going on. 
I try to but a Steam Controller… very unsuccessfully. 
We all try to understand the naming conventions behind the latest gadgets… somehow more unsuccessfully. 
Oh and Microsoft dropped the price of Game Pass and all we had to give up was Call of Duty? See, it wasn’t all bad! 
Developer conferences looming right around the corner, somehow all this activity feels like the storm before the… umm… slightly bigger storm? 
Buckle up everybody, turbulence ahead… 

Episode 139 - What does "MSP" stand for? (Oh... and Tim Cook stepped down...)

I would be the last one to call myself a marketing genius, guru, or any other term that might suggest one knows what the heck they’re talking about… but even I know that, in many cases, it’s helpful to call a thing what it is or is supposed to be… you know… so people know what it is or what it’s for? 
iPhone? It was an phone with an iPod in it…
Desktop Computer? Yep, a computer that, once upon a time, sat on a desk…
Google? Okay, not every example is perfect but you get what I mean… 
So what is it that I’m on about that makes me sound just that little-bit-more insane that I usually am? Well, if you didn’t know already this podcast… isn’t exactly our day job. Shocker, I know. 
My outstanding co-presenters are midline-podcasters by very-early-day and front line, in the weeds, technology consultants by… the rest of those days. 
But the specific vertical of all-things-tech we work in? That is this incredible, wonderful, and oftentimes brain-scrambling segment called “Managed Services” which makes us… yep… a “Managed Services Provider” or M-S-P… 
You might be wondering, but John, does that mean the “T” in MSP stands for Technology? Congratulations, you’re now just as confused as I’ve been about my own job for the last two decades. 
All of the jargon-y-ness aside though… as the tech-of-it-call continues to effectively invade every facet of our work lives, home lives, and everything in between… suddenly it starts to make sense…
The wrong computer goes down… orders don’t ship on time. A certain printer breaks… checks aren’t cut. The bad guys compromise the wrong email account and… to be quite honest… jobs are at stake. 
So that missing “T” I was talking about? This crazy game has gotten so much bigger than that… So today let’s find out, what does MSP really stand for? 
Oh, and have you tried turning it off and on again? 

Episode 138 - The thing about Wearables in 2026

It’s honestly very funny to me how you can look at a gadget and think one particular way about it… have a stray thought… and then suddenly look at that same gadget in a VERY different light…
Spoiler warning and all that jazz, but I recently had that exact experience with nothing other than my trusty, daily driver Apple Watch. 
There’s no getting around it, the Apple Watch didn’t just define a category, it de facto created it. Yes I know, every Pebble owner and Moto 360 faithful (you know who you are) is clamoring for their keyboard to email me as I speak… but it simply can’t be ignored that like the iPad, the iPhone, and yes the venerable iPod before it, the Apple Watch made wearables the market it is today. Oh, and it continues to sit atop it. 
So taking all of that and somehow… setting it aside… is it good for me? Apple says this device is a health and fitness forward piece of technology… designed to make your day easier, your Walled Garden journey more fruitful, and your heart beat ever-so-better…
And honestly… all of that is true. The ways I’ve integrated it into my daily workflow have made it easier. The integration with the other Apple-driven services in my life are borderline flawless. And, as someone who went through a substantial health journey over the last five years… I don’t know if I would have gotten here without that watch. Oh, and possibly more important… those three colored rings……
And that's the thought I had the other day, the one that made me gaze at my wrist in an entirely different light for the first time in over a decade. My jeans are a different size today than if I hadn’t had that tool, there’s almost no doubt about that. But here, now, in 2026… am I an addict? 
Well dear listener, in true Solid State fashion there’s only one way to find out… let’s dive in…

Episode 137 - Four Years (and one week) Anniversary Special

This week on the Solid State Podcast… we’re another year older, certainly no wiser, and somehow just as not-on-time as ever… 
Yep, you guessed it… on March 11, 2022 we dropped the very first full episode of the show… the runtimes were a shorter, the content was honestly a bit smarter, and my gadget collection… okay it was already out of control but its definitely gotten worse over those years… 
So when our Anniversary date rolled around we sat down, prepped a show around it, and then I proceeded to get whatever the heck this “cold” is that seemingly everyone I know has lately and lets face it… you didn’t want to listen to whatever that would have been for an hour. 
So, in the most on-brand way possible, we come to you Four Years and One Week into this whole things to deliver not just a walk down memory lane but also to connect the dots over those years and ask ourselves… how much has really changed? 
Vinyl? Still flying off the shelves. Building a PC in 2026? Somehow more expensive than in 2022. Oh and the “Singularity”? I don’t know who’s idea it was to launch this show talking about a global-scale AI platform but… uh… yeah……
There’s nothing else to say other than, everything else aside… Thank You. Thank you for four years (okay, and a week) of laughs, bad puns, and tortured credit cards… and here’s to a heck-of-a-lot more...
Make it so. 

Episode 136 - Samsung Unpacked, MWC, and Apple Announcement Week

This week on the Solid State Podcast I… get to speak to you from the past. No, not in a Back to the Future kind of way… though that’d be pretty cool… instead its for the far more mundane reason that, when recording an episode “on the road” its important to remember two things… your recording equipment AND the source files for, you know, actually cutting together the show…
So, with that, here we are on a beautiful Florida morning on March 10th, where I come to you quote-unquote “live” to intro an episode… recorded in the mountains of north Georgia… on March 3rd… 
Anyway… This week on the Solid State Podcast, for real this time, we’re talking all-things-mobile! Samsung had their flagship Unpacked event, Mobile World Congress was in full swing, and Apple decided to carpet bomb the industry with day-after-day of announcements on everything from iPads to a “new” MacBook… 
Again due to the, umm, Timey-Whimey-ness of this episode, some of those items… weren’t exactly announced yet… but rest assured we have PLENTY more to say in upcoming episodes as these devices go from being announcements on a projector screen to actual, physical objects in our hands to study, review, and hopefully find a place for in our daily tech lives… 
With no further ado, Allons-y…