Solid State Podcast

This week on the Solid State Podcast… well there’s no sugar coating it… we, forgot to set a topic… 
Now let’s take stock of the positives first… everyone showed up on time, cameras worked on the first try, and the duct tape holding a rather important cable I was supposed to replace almost a year ago… still hasn’t given out. These are the makings of a great episode…
Until that fateful moment when one of my co-presenters… asked what we were actually here to talk about this week…
Did we cancel? Absolutely not. Did we pivot? Ehh?! Have we proven once again that the three of us can sit down, no agenda, and fill 60+ plus minutes talking about the various ways we either have or plan to waste our money on gadgets and wider tech this season? Well what do you think…
Maybe go make an extra cup of coffee, and probably some other preferred sugar delivery system on the way back to settle in because this one… it’s a ride. 
Aaaaand I’m pretty sure that piece of tape is actually about to give so… we’ll be right back…

The age-old saying “The more things change the more they stay the same” couldn’t be… more accurate for this week’s show. 
It’s no secret that we do this show because we love it… we’re not here to be on billboards, top any charts, or quote-unquote “move the needle”… We do the thing out of a genuine passion for the thing we’re doing. 
126 times later… well, it had to happen… we… ended up in the same room. 
Talking over each other? Turns out that’s not because of the call lag. Running way over on time? That definitely didn’t get any better. Having the opportunity to do something so “routine” shoulder-to-shoulder with two of the best in the biz? As they say… priceless. 
The only sadness to be found in the room was the realization after the red light turned off was that this really was a “once in a blue moon” opportunity… next go around we’ll be back in front of our cameras, poorly lit by monitors and effects lights, wondering why we can’t pick a better time of day to do this. 
Or… who knows… maybe we’ve got even more in store just around the corner. Guess you’ll have to wait and see…

This show has a whole lot of… “whys” behind it… Education(ish) for sure, its just fun is a definite top three, but right atop the mountain for me, at least, is and continues to be our shared, mutual, and genuine love of these silly hunks of plastic, bundles of wires, and ever-charging batteries we simply call “gadgets”. 
And there’s no better time of year to be a tried-and-true Gadget Head than Gadget Season, of course! After an entire year-to-date of announcements, developer conferences, thinly veiled teases, and giant quote-unquote “leaks”… this is the time when the devices get packed, the tracking numbers are issued, and the highly rendered version in the advertisement of whatever we spent our money on runs face-first into this harsh thing called reality. 
Do we watch said tracking from shipment-to-delivery with the excitement of a child staring at the chimney on Christmas Eve? More than I’d like to admit. Will any of this year’s lineup of next-big-things change any our lives? Most certainly not. Are any of them even any good? Guess that’s why you’re here, now isn’t it? 
With no further ado, we’re going to chat through some glasses that are here, some slightly more interesting glasses that… aren’t… as well as newly arrived earbuds, smartphones, and even watches from both this century and last… I promise, that one will make more sense in the wrap. 
Oh, and as if that wasn’t enough, we even have a tease of our own at the end of the show… what can I say, we couldn’t help ourselves? Guess you’ll have to listen and find out… and hey, no skipping! 
Spoilers…

Listen… some weeks I more-or-less bore you with pieces of my own tech history that, honestly, you only just barely signed up for…
Other weeks though, well let’s face it there’s just no room for preamble! 
Generally speaking, mid-ish September is often one of those weeks because, there’s no other way to say it, it’s iPhone announcement week! In a now-tradition going back to October 2011 and the fall launch of the iPhone 4S (and yes, “S” was for Siri, come at me I’ll die on that hill), the long days of summer begin slipping into recent memory and a fall of holiday shopping, (hopefully) cooling temperatures, and shiny new iPhones have been cornerstones over since.
Is this the end of Apple’s “year”? Almost certainly not. But even with iPads, processors, and other accessories still to come in the weeks and months ahead, it’s still impossible to ignore that this remains “The Big One”…
And, to be fair, it’s (as usual) not just phones on tap here… we’ve got AirPods and an assortment of watches to get through as well… 
In the end, the final question is really the only one that matters… are any of these gadgets your next one? Let’s find out…

So it’s not going to exactly be a big secret, you’ll undoubtedly hear it in today’s recording (sorry about that…) but I… have a cold. It’s nothing so terrible that I’m “bed ridden”, but at the same time I absolutely feel like a walking zombie who’s taking 3-4x longer to perform even the most basic task. At thirty seven years old, this is mildly inconvenient at best and day-altering at worst. Twenty five or thirty years ago though… school-aged John would have had one agenda… a day off in pajamas filled with Mario, Pokemon, and Mega Man on nothing other than my trusty Gameboy…
So it’s no wonder, these literal decades later, that on stuffy-headed days like today I have a nearly innate yearning to pickup my Gameboy’s spiritual successor the Switch an proceed “recovering” on the couch to the subtle tones of Zelda’s background music…
In that moment, though, it hits me… yes the Switch is “portable”, I guess you can even call it “hand held” (with two hands, looking at you, dbrand)... but the equation has changed SO much since the still very pocket-able Gameboy days (and the DS, 3DS, even 3DS XL that followed). 
So the question is, have we lost something in translation? Was the true best, final form of the portable gaming device a foot-wide slab that mostly fits in a backpack? Or are we missing out on the best 10-15 minutes of gaming we could find here and there when still truly amazing titles were along for the ride in our pocket. 
Battery just finished charging, so lets find out…

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? 

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. 

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…

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…

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…