Solid State Podcast

Episode 123 - Can Jimmy Fallon save the Google Pixel?

I’ve talked, quite recently actually, about my “island of misfit toys”… my shelves upon shelves of yesterday’s tech, lost to time maybe but not to memory. While this week’s entries are very unlikely to earn a spot on said shelf, it doesn’t stop me considering the generations of devices to come first every time a new contender enters the market. 
Earlier this week I was doing exactly that exercise, taking in a time when phones had home buttons, scroll balls… heck, even a headphone jack… and what occurred to me the further I went “back in time” was how much more diverse and, well, obvious the design choices were. One manufacturer might try a “chin” at the bottom of their phone, thinking the would be the thing to make them stand out, while at basically the same time others would try not-so-subtle curves to their glass. 
These choices, some paradigm shifting and some… not… did at the very least lead to generation after generation of devices that you could actually tell apart from across a crowded room. Today, for the most part though, you nearly have to hold the phone just right in the light to make out the logo on the back or risk uttering the wrong brand in conversation…
The one place this “unified theory of phone design” doesn’t seem to have set in, yet at least, is over in foldables. Yes, they obviously have certain qualities in common like, you know, a hinge… but past that we see companies trying different paths still in aspect ratio, material design, even dare-I-say form factor…
So, when given the chance to look at the paths chosen by Samsung and Google in nearly-consecutive weeks, it’s honestly so much more entertaining to take in the technical advances, sure, but really spend our time interrogating the choices then went into making these things. Why go wider instead of taller? Should it open to be more square, or rectangle? Need we continue to fear dust or 50 grams of added weight in our pockets more? 
The answer to all the above came from a meeting, a design group, a decision… and now we have these devices in our lives to ask the only obvious question in reply… who made the right call? 

Episode 122 - The thing about roleing a Nat Twenty...

Origin stories are a funny thing… they’re one part history lesson, two parts Science Fiction often times, and just a dash of self-indulgent FanFic about ourselves for added flavor…
So when we took a proper look at our own origin stories, how we got to this very place in our careers as technology professionals and card-carrying-nerds… we pushed past all the gadgets, all the experimental builds-gone-wrong, and all the countless nights on the couch, controller in hand, with just one more boss to beat… and realized before all those pixels, frames, and gigahertz was a dark room, a table, and friends with character sheets in one hand and dice in the other… 
Table top Roleplaying Games such as Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, and the myriad of others like them have gone through something of a cultural resurgence in the last decade for sure. From Stranger Things to Baldur’s Gate to… well… a literal movie called “Dungeon’s & Dragons” starring none other than a Potato Dragon… But even before they found their way into the hearts and minds of a seemingly whole new generation of fans, characters, and future DMs… there was still a quiet army of devoted fans rolling out a map, putting on background music, and hosting their regular game night. 
And that’s the part we couldn’t ignore any longer… sure there is literally no tech to be found here… except that every single ounce of our love of all-things-technology, gadgets, and “the future” has direct connective tissue to the creativity, imagination, and… fun that starts sitting around that table.
So screens off, ringers to silent, and grab your dice (you know you’ve got ‘em)… let’s play. 

Episode 121 - Solid State's "Back to School" Tech Picks of 2025

The saying “time flies” has always troubled me… time feels like one of those constants we should be able to rely on yet, as it indeed goes by, I will at least agree our perception of it, at minimum… evolves.
Take “the long days of summer” for instance… I can remember as a school-aged kid thinking summers would never end, I’d get to play with my friends from sun-up-to-sun-down forever, and fifth grade was a distant future that, as far as I was concerned, would never arrive. 
Now today, many, many… many… summers later… another one is almost over? 
Yep, as impossible as it is to believe, “Back to school” is in the air as parents begin gathering supplies, teachers begin dressing up rooms, and retailers across the land are… well… putting up “Sale” signs. 
Whether you’re needing to pick up a bluetooth mouse for your Middle Schooler’s Chromebook because it turns out Sunny D and trackpads don’t mix, or you’re on your twelfth laptop review (that all somehow say the same yet polar opposite things) scouring the internet for the gear of the Class of 2029 (yikes) this is not-so-sneakily one of the prime times of year to upgrade and expand your tech while stretching every dollar nearly to its limit. 
Is every laptop the cheapest it will ever be? Nope. 
Is this deal, that conveniently “ends” in 59 minutes, ever going to come around again? Without a doubt. 
Does the MacBook Air still reign supreme as the “laptop for everyone”, students, professionals, and grandparents alike? 
Guess you’ll just have to listen and find out…

Episode 120 - We unfold Samsung Unpacked 2025 with the Z Flip and Fold 7

On a shelf in my office is a line of phones… No they’re not spares, or “extras”, heck the vast majority of them probably don’t even turn on any more. Instead they represent signpost moments in my own technology journey. Far in the back is the same candy-bar shaped Nokia “brick” that pretty much every phone-using person had at one point in the early 2000’s… it was my first cell phone. A little further over is a lightly cracked but still intact Google Nexus One… not the first Android phone, but it was my first Android phone… You get it, and trust me the list goes on… these devices aren’t valuable or even particularly special… but each one anchors to a point in time of my journey to this very moment in the tech world, and hopefully the collection will keep growing. 
So what then, does that have to do with Samsung’s Summer 2025 “Unpacked” foldable event? See, one thing I find interesting about my own shelves of IT History is that no where on them… from a TRS-80 to the original Chromebook Pixel… is a true foldable (No, I don’t count you, Surface Duo. ). 
I’ve owned quite a few, going back years at this point. We’ve talked about most of them on this very show! So why then, has each one disappeared into obscurity as the next is announced unlike the dozens of personal artifacts on those shelves? 
To be quite honest… a lot of it has to do with these things are freakin expensive, trade-ins have been a big part of getting “the next one”… and that… hasn’t changed this time around. 
So this week we’ve got phones, watches, software, the full gamut to talk about… and we will. But somehow, as I anticipate receiving this years entries and seeing where they fit in my own day-to-day technology life… I can’t help but wonder… will any of them end up on the shelf? 
Guess we’ll have to wait and see…

Episode 119 - A show about Nothing

This week on the Solid State Podcast, we talk about… Nothing…
No, really… Nothing actually has new headphones, and we talk about them!
In case you can’t tell, a slough of major events from I/O to WWDC are behind us and while we wait for Samsung and others to fill our lives with more gadgets in the coming weeks, we chose to take a beat and meander (as we’re want to do) through everything from the iOS 26 Beta to Switch cases and car sized, galaxy filming cameras…
So, in the market for a new pair of smart glasses? This week (shocker to no one), we’ve got you covered. Ever laid awake at night wishing your digital photos had the look-and-feel of classic, 1980’s Fuji film cameras (because who hasn’t…)? Yep, that’s on tap too. 
And if all that wasn’t enough, I still find time to take a (somewhat) abridged tirade through Microsoft’s seemingly willful inability to just listen to good advice and treat Xbox like the software platform that it rightfully is rather than a (now) overpriced, nearly long-in-the-tooth black cube in your entertainment center…
Well, considering it’s a show about Nothing, somehow we found an awful lot to say… too much even. But let’s not forget, you chose to be here, so with that let’s dive in and see what this week really has in store…

Episode 118 - WWDC 2025 (Did Apple finally hear us?)

This week on the Solid State Podcast, well… there’s just no other way to say it… it’s WWDC! 
That’s right, it’s summertime in 2025 and that means nothing other than Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference just took place and with it a slough of announcements, Beta releases to play with, and an ever-sharpening picture of where Apple at least thinks it wants to go with its broader product line in the coming months, years, and frankly beyond…
We know full well our episodes are never exactly… umm… short… But this one was a challenge even for us to fit it all into a single run. We’re not saying it was an action packed event… far from it in fact… but what Apple did bring to the table could have far reaching implications for almost every corner of their product and service offerings. 
User interface and design, power user workflows, a new naming convention across the board of their OS’s, and… dare we say it… an actual mouse pointer in iPad OS? Yeah, this isn’t exactly “put it up on a billboard” kind of stuff, but in possibly a much more meaningful way it could represent one of the most end-to-end changes in both the look-and-feel as well as the overall usability of Apple’s core products for many of its users. 
And, at the end of the day, if you’re really just here to have an iPhone, use it every day, and be annoyed once every Fall when all of your buttons move around for seemingly no reason after a reboot one night… then, well, this Fall is likely to be no different for you…
This year had all the hallmarks… an internet full of “Apple is doomed” predictions, further confirmation of Apple “falling behind” in a race that may or may not even actually be happening, and once again adding Wallpaper to one of its product was an on-stage, announcement worthy moment for team-fruit… 
Like I said, it’s WWDC, would we have it any other way? 

Episode 117 - We got a Nintendo Switch 2 and now we're happy

Technology, in a weird way, is at its best when it makes us feel like a kid again…
It’s hard to ignore the swell of emotion and nostalgia… as gamers, nerds, or whatever you want to call us… when you fire up a classic that takes you right back to sitting precious too-few inches in front of a TV playing countless hours until being told for the twelfth time that it was absolutely time to go to bed…
So it comes as no shock, based on nothing else than how many times we’ve talked about it in the years that we’ve been waiting for this very day, that it was suddenly 1991 again the moment a relatively little, red blue and black box with “Nintendo Switch 2” emblazoned on the side was (honestly unexpectedly) in our very presence…
Were the preorders nothing short of a debacle? I refer you to a previous episode…
Was a single retailer effective in communicating how one was supposed to even try to exchange currency for one of these seemingly-gold-plated marvels? It was so bad it was almost by design…
Did all of that disappear into a puff of digital smoke the moment I hit a two-second-launch perfectly on my first outing in Mario Kart World? Let’s just say my eyes hurt a little as I write this, and it’s not hard to figure out why…
Technology is special in so many ways, but one of its most foundational is its ability to entertain, inspire, and frankly distract us at moments we maybe need it most. 
Now, do excuse me for a moment, I think I just figured out a shortcut on this circuit I’ve been stuck on and I’ve got characters to unlock…

Episode 116 - Google I/O 2025 (Let's party like its 2013...)

About twelve years ago I got onto a coast-to-coast flight in the cheapest seat of the worst airline I’ve ever been on to attend a a tech event. It was equal parts Star Trek and Willy Wonka with promises of futuristic, ambient computers ready to sort your ever whim at the speak of a simple wake word coupled with literal 10-foot tall robot-arm bartenders making drinks on command… all while none other than Billy Idol performed “White Wedding” live just 15 feet from me. Yep, it was an event-slash-party done the way only Google could do, especially at a time when their geekish-whimsy was still in full bloom. 
Fast forward more than a decade and things are somehow still very much the same and also wildly different. 
Google I/O is still very much a thing… the goal of everyone in the room in one-way-or-another is still to build the computer from the Starship Enterprise… and, okay, admittedly Billy Idol probably didn’t make this one. Substitute A/I or Gemini for Google Assistant, Flow for Google Play Music, and Project Aura for Google Glass and we’re suddenly partying like it’s 2013! 
But remember that part about it also being wildly different? 
Google isn’t the teenager-of-a-company that it was in 2013. It’s many times larger, sure, but also has many times the pressure, responsibility (to shareholders), and existential threats that seem to mount more and more every day. 
Gemini is coming to Chrome… but what if Google suddenly doesn’t own Chrome? Google Beam lets you hold a meeting with someone virtually as if they’re really there… but what if more and more people are just down the hall again to have a meeting with? Google AI Search will do all the Google’ing for you… until there’s no more web pages left to search because no one visits them anymore. 
It’s far from a death knell, but it’s impossible to say that the air at altitudes that Google breaths isn’t getting a bit thin as time goes on. But, at the end of the day, Google took the stage, announcements were made, and we’re left (as always) to answer one question… what’s next?

Episode 115 - Microsoft has new Surfaces... sort of

It’s kind of funny, in the office lately we’ve been half-joking about being careful how you manifest things… it’s great when you “put out there” that a new project kicks off well… and it does… or you hope against all hope that a concerning trend isn’t here to stay… and it isn’t. So, should we be surprised that after weeks of lamenting the desert of gadget news we’ve been traversing… we are suddenly greeted by the relatively unexpected arrival of not one but two new Surface devices from Microsoft? 
It’s no secret that we review, use, and maintain a relatively vast fleet of devices made up of every brand and logo you’ve ever heard of… and several you haven’t. Dell, HP, Acer, Asus… yep they’re all there and many times they’re really good and even great at what they do. 
But some lineups… just hold a special spot in our hearts and for whatever reason Surface has just always been one of those!
From the arrival of the first Surface RT almost thirteen years ago to the latest Snapdragon-powered behemoth that arrived on our doorstep just last summer… we’ve been there for it all. A few have been great, several have been… not… and a rare couple have even been game changing (at least for the industry that was left to chase them). Like the best concept car, sometimes Surface hasn’t been about selling a certain number of units or directly moving the needle of one of the world’s largest companies… but instead about putting the channel on notice for what they could (and should) be making out of their own products. 
I’m here to tell you, the laptop you have today, regardless of what it is, is better because Surface exists. Believe me. 
So, when Microsoft suddenly shakes things up not with a “next generation” but instead with what appears to be novel entries in-and-around their existing lineup… well let’s just say we’ve found an oasis in the desert, and it’s about to get exciting around here!

Episode 114 - We didn't get a Switch 2 and now we're sad...

This week on the Solid State Podcast, we realized something… odd. 
We’ve mentioned it off-hand on several recent episodes, but it has come more and more into focus as the weeks have gone on. It’s quiet out there… too quiet. 
Sure, we’re in the post CES, MWC, etc lull that exists every year as we wade towards Summer’s more splashy, developer-focused events like Google I/O and Apple’s WWDC… but even that expected downtime is so quiet right now, the silence is honestly deafening. 
Don’t get us wrong… there’s plenty of people talking, but what’s actually being said? Switch 2 pre-orders took place… which mostly left a lot of people tired after a night of no sleep and sadly almost as many with no actual Switch 2 order with their name on it…
Companies seem to be coming out of the woodwork left and right making noise about buying a pretty ubiquitous web browser that… isn’t actually for sale yet. 
And on top of all that, prices have begun to not-so-subtly fluctuate across consumer tech… from video cards to cameras… something is afoot and we’re just not so sure it’s 100% correlated to the things dominating the daily news cycle. 
Are you confused yet? That’s okay, because we are to! So, for a stroll through what we’ve unceremoniously deemed the “un-News”… let’s take a crack and figuring out what the heck is going on out there…