Solid State Podcast

Episode 63 - The Thing About Travel Tech

It’s not always overly obvious, but more often than not we do put a certain amount of planning into our episode topics… they vary greatly from recent big Tech events and device drops that we just couldn’t wait to get our hands on and tell you about all the way to deeper, long term formats like our favorite “The Cost of” series… but on the other end of the spectrum are those born out of an experience we didn’t plan to share, but became to hard to resist. 
This week is absolutely one of the latter, because following a pretty last-minute trip across the country I was struck by how much the tech that powers those trips has changed even just in recent years. The greatest hits are of course still there: A laptop, a smartphone, a game console... but the shape, size, and capability of these devices has leapt forward in a way that even surprised me when I slowed down long enough to think about it.
The connective tissue to so many of our other beloved topics was also too hard to resist… Is it safe to charge your phone at a public charging station or should I find a good old fashioned wall plug at the airport? The Public Wifi might seem faster, but my trusty hotspot and VPN are the combo for me. Is being able to connect with my office, team, and clients at a moments notice a miracle of technology or a curse of our remote culture? I could go on and on, and in many ways that’s exactly what we did. 
So pour another cup of coffee, minimize that Priceline page, and let’s talk all the things about Travel Tech…

Episode 62 - What is a Photo (Part 1) - Hands on with Nikon’s ZF

Hanging on the wall in the next room, in some cheap-ish frames that came from insert-big-box-store here, are a series of architectural photos of some of the great buildings around downtown Chicago… the edges are just a little pixelated if you look close enough, the colors are blown out in several places, and at best they follow the rule-of-almost-thirds… But I love them.
They’ve followed me through several apartments and houses through the years, and are typically one of the first things to go up because they’re a structural component of “home” to me. You see, these mediocre-at-best photos are mine. 
They originate from a particularly important journey to Chicago with my then-girlfriend-turned-fiancé (on that very trip), and were the result of the most basic “point and shoot” photography with my now-infamous iPhone 4 of the day. Some time later my (by that point) wife printed, framed, and gifted me those photos from our trip. They mean the world to me. 
If your wondering by this point why I’m filling air time with more-than-decade old photos from an ancient iPhone, its because that’s just how important these memorialized moments can be. 
So when Nikon releases a camera that, in no uncertain terms, is focused on nostalgia, manual photo manipulation, and the build quality of a Sherman tank… the very train of thought I describe above is obviously still important to some people out there!
Today we’re going to talk about pictures, photos, why they’re not necessarily the same thing, and the first in a likely long-line of evolving conversation on the tools we use to capture them. Literally hours on the heels of cracking open the box, let’s get hands on with Nikon’s brand new ZF DSLR…

Episode 61 - What’s in the box with Google’s Pixel 8 Pro

The concept of a “thing” being greater than the sum of its parts is one of those recurring topics on this show… mostly because it’s so true across the technology space. Gadgets, services, apps… you name it… sometimes the product that ends up in your hands is just… more that it otherwise should have been on paper…
This week we had the opportunity to get hands-on with Google’s recently announced Pixel 8 Pro… and the results were exactly that… the screen is better and brighter, the processor is faster and more efficient, and the Operating System has a fresh coat of paint and a slew of new features… All are fine, some are even good, but something else about this device is more than even all of that should add up to… 
Google’s journey through hardware has been… storied… From the days of Nexus phones and Google Glass all the way to today’s Pixel lineup of phones, foldables, and tablets there has always been something missing. It’s not always about quality, direction, or usefulness… it just constantly feels like Google isn’t “all in” on these efforts. And in a very real way, there’s a Samsung-sized reason that could be true…
So with that in mind, maybe just maybe things are starting to shift… a stepped-up Ad campaign, a very real moment happening around all-things-AI, and a promise of years and years of guaranteed upgrades might push the math in Google’s favor this year… or this is going to turn out to be just another reminder from Google to Samsung that yes, they still exist as more than a software vendor of theirs… 
Which is it going to be? Let’s find out…

Episode 60 - Microsoft’s 2023 Surface Event and iPhone 15 Pro Max Review

This week on Solid State, things are definitely a little more… laid back. You see, every so often, you just believe with all of your heart that a company is going to surprise you… that everything won’t be exactly the way the leaks, predictions, and outright guesses said they would… 
Other times though… well that’s just what happens and what-we-said-is-what-we-got!
With no more beating around the bush, Microsoft had an event to basically refresh some devices… we’d already seen… announce some services… we’d already used… and update us on their roadmap… while saying nothing at all. 
I don’t want to cast stones at Microsoft specifically, they’re hardly alone in the who’s who of major companies that just couldn’t pull the “big show” together… but on the heels of massive layoffs earlier in the year and the sudden departure of one of its best, brightest, and most renowned… things just might not be business-as-usual in Redmond these days. 
Now, that all hardly sounds like a good sales pitch for 45-or-so minutes of your listening attention, but don’t worry, it IS us after all! We dive deep on not just the “what” but the “WHY” with so much of Microsoft’s current moment. 
And, to sweeten things up, we round out the episode with our first hands-on time with none other than the iPhone 15 Pro Max…
So toggle that Action Button, because it’s time to go full yin-and-yang and talk Microsoft’s 2023 Surface Event AND Apple’s iPhone 15 debut… 

Episode 59 - Amazon’s 2023 Device Event

Let’s set the stage… you’re driving down the interstate (hmm… haven’t we been here before?)… and while attempting to make a pass in the left lane going a perfectly legal speed, you discover the source of all the slowness is a big semi truck, cruise set on 65, and emblazoned down the blue cargo bed in bold, white letters is “AMAZON”…
This is a familiar site to all of us because, well, it’s frankly how we get a lot of our stuff! For better or for worse, it’s a thing! So when Amazon shows up each fall with one of those semi trucks loaded down with nothing more than announcements for new products and services people tend to pay attention! 
This year was, put simply, no different and yet entirely different at the same time… Words like “Echo”, “Fire”, and “for kids” abounded, but right under the surface was a new sort of tension… All things Echo suddenly also mean all-things-Generative AI, and the normal lineup of every possible screen size of device was pared down to just a couple of (relatively) minor refreshes and spec bumps. 
This by itself isn’t necessary just an Amazon thing… we’ve talked very recently about how at first glance Apple’s own iPhone event was seemingly subdued, even calm. But Amazon is just in a different position… layoffs earlier in the year touched almost every division, including the ones responsible for these very devices. And while Echo is nearly ubiquitous across households, they partially accomplish that feat with bargain-basement prices and never-ending pack-ins…
So the question that remains, is this truly just a “slower year” for Amazon, or is there perhaps something more strategic happening just behind closed doors… Let’s find out…

Episode 58 - Apple’s 2023 ”Wanderlust” iPhone and Apple Watch Event

Nostalgia is a thing we talk about on this show every so often… Okay… maybe a little more frequently than that but you get it…
So when September rolls around it’s hard not to start feeling like it’s iPhone Christmas Eve… an invite is going to go out (however cryptically), the journalistic would descends on Cupertino, and the next thing you know it there’s a new iPhone! 
And then… well… you normally get to wait days (or longer) to preorder it… and then tragically you get to wait days (or longer) for it to arrive… 
You’d be forgiven for wondering… what the heck is there to be nostalgic for here? It sounds like 4-6 weeks of pent-up consumer demand followed by a year-long cycle of equal parts loving and dissecting a piece of metal, glass, and silicon until it’s time to shell out and buy yet another one not too many months later… 
But this is exactly why we do it… the iPhone has become one of those cornerstones… a more-or-less fixed place in time and space, a point of origin for the technology cycle to revolve around. Yes, there are many other events from countless other brands, but few carry such a broad impact on the consumer attention span… 
It’s not just tech journalists and gadget nerds that know it’s iPhone week… everyone knows it… and that creates a moment that’s actually special, dare I say a little magical, and (in the end) one I become nostalgic for when it’s come-and-gone…
So, back to the matter at hand, the big day has come and now it’s time to dive all the way in on Apple's “Wanderlust” iPhone event 2023…

Episode 57 - Parts Bin... Gadget Season 2023 Event Kickoff

In our last episode we led off with gadget season being “upon us”… and we weren’t wrong. Samsung came out early with their fall lineup of devices and, if you couldn’t tell, we think they’re pretty great!
But if Samsung snuck out “first”, it wasn’t for lack of the industry-at-large being right on their heels…
In just a few short days, virtually every technology brand you’ve heard of in the last decade will be taking to the stage, peddling their latest wares, and trying oh-so-desperately to make the case for why their device, service, or flying car is the most important purchase you could hope to make this holiday season…
We came into this expecting to be brief, to do a purely 50,000 ft overview of what’s ahead and then let the events (and products) speak for themselves… but seriously, have you not learned anything yet by listening to this show? 
It’s a brisk pace nonetheless, with five major events (and countless others in the periphery) happening just in the next five weeks… Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, and Google all have major, flagship-level announcements in store…
With that in mind then, the real question on everyones mind is which of them will be worth your time, which of them will actually move the needle in their respective space, and… honestly… which of them will actually be any good? 
A month’s worth of caffeine is already flowing, so let's dive right in to see just what Big Tech has in the pipeline as we kickoff Gadget Season 2023….

Episode 56 - What’s in the box... Samsung’s 2023 foldables, watches, and tablets

Gadget season is upon us and that just makes me… happy…
We do this job for a whole lot of reasons, but one of them is the genuine love of an unopened box, fresh protective film on the screen, and a quiet evening of installing Day 1 updates, apps, and syncing data…
Sadly I’m not being the slightest bit sarcastic here! So when Samsung had their foldable-watch-tablet-car-washing machine Unpacked event a few weeks ago, I knew that several such nights of new-device-goodness was in my future…
Now that we’ve had a few short days of being hands-on with them though, we couldn’t help but hop back on the mics and take a first-impressions walk through what’s changed this year and, possibly just as importantly, what hasn't changed…
You’d be forgiven for seeing the vast majority of these releases as strictly iterative because… well… that’s exactly what they are…
But beneath the surface, and in a few cases right on it, there are some intentional and dare-I-say meaningful developments that may entice some to trade-in-and-trade-up or even be the final missing piece to attract a first time user…
Okay… lets dive in…

Episode 55 - The Cost of Working Remotely

Technology is really supposed to do a lot of things… make us more efficient, remind us to be healthier, solve our most complex problems… while at the same time being simple enough that an elementary school child can pick it up and somehow make me feel a million years old at Fortnite…
All these things, whether they’re successful or not carry some measure of tangible value because, frankly, we would have stopped using them by now without it!
But in one, genuinely key area technology hasn’t just evolved in recent years, its hit light speed… and that’s the gear, the software, and really the services that drive and enable remote work in the modern world… 
Listen, regardless of what any of these companies will happily tell you, none of this is revolutionary… we’ve had VPNs for decades, video calls since Skype, and sometimes I actually do miss when email was the only virtual pile of notifications I had to worry about triaging each day… but the ubiquity of it all, how the rabid hunger for these tools in almost every vertical and way of life… that's relatively new…
Certainly the Pandemic played a horrifying but pivotal role in that seemingly overnight explosion onto the stage of our “new normal”… but as companies globally are grappling with the NEW new normal… we got to wondering at a personal level, and a professional level, heck even as a human that just wants to get to work each day… what is the Cost of Working Remotely…

Episode 54 - Samsung’s Foldable Unpacked Event 2023

Let’s just get it out of the way… I tend to change phones… shall we say… about as often as most people get their hair cut…
So when I get to say my SIM card that is all but exclusively held for my “phone of the month” problem has been attached to the Samsung Galaxy Flip 4 that I literally purchased on this show last year… well honestly it might be a record!
The phone isn’t slow but it isn’t necessarily “fast” either… the build quality has every short coming that a modern foldable phone has and then some… and even when unfolded it’s still noticeably smaller than the iPhone that rides shotgun in my other pocket. 
So, why then, has this phone stood my version of a “test of time” where countless others have gotten their 30-or-so days of trial by combat followed by relegation to the dreaded desk drawer of waiting until something else comes along that it can be traded-in towards… 
The best answer I can come up with… and stay with me here… is that the Flip is actually different… it’s actually novel… dare I say every so often it’s… FUN!
If you haven’t pieced it together yet (or read the episode title) I am, in the usual round-about way, building up to Samsung’s foldable Unpacked event for 2023… No the Flip 5 wasn’t the only announcement, in fact there were several and each had their own unique way of standing out in sometimes-subtle but always meaningful ways… 
We’re going to do our best to hit them all, give a Birds Eye view of what’s coming in a couple short weeks when these devices hit store shelves, and set the stage for what MIGHT just be one heck-of-a “What’s in the box” episode to come…