Solid State Podcast

This week on the Solid State Podcast, it’s all-Google all-the-time… thankfully not (as much) in a “how badly are they getting sued this time” kind of way, but instead with a slate of new Pixel phones, earbuds, watches, and all-things-Gemini packaged up in a launch event that in our opinion just feels… “different” in the context of those pesky lawsuits we mentioned… Pixel itself isn’t new to Google...

If you’ve been even remotely nerd-culture adjacent, then chances are pretty good you’ve seen an episode or twenty of Star Trek, in the case of this example the fan-favorite “Next Generation” series… See, this re-imagining of Gene Roddenberry’s original vision from the 1960’s of a distant future of galavanting space cowboys had a pretty tall order to fill… be respectful of the original material, ch...

Quite a ways back, we did an episode about our first computers… Cody’s was recent enough to almost be usable today, Eric’s was long enough ago it arrived as spare parts that more resembled a TI calculator, and mine was right in the middle… the hallmark of mid-90’s computing it was an off-white beast of a tower with dual disk drives, fans you could hear from the driveway, and enough RAM to almost r...

A couple short years ago I sat down in this very chair, in front of this computer, and recorded the intro for an episode of this show. It would have been a pretty normal “day ending in Y” had it not been for the rising sound of wind outside and the fact that I couldn’t see through my office window due to the solid metal storm shutters in place.  Hurricane Ian was mere hours away from its historic...

This week on the Solid State Podcast, we tricked ourselves into thinking this would be a “quick one”…  See, at first you can’t really blame us… Samsung had their (formerly “Fall”, now very much Summer) Unpacked event focused on their foldable phone hardware plus a smattering of other devices and, on paper at least, it seemed like kind of a snoozer… Screens got a little bigger, hinges got a little...

This week on the Solid State Podcast, we mix things up a little bit… Not just by constantly going off the rails, because let’s face it you just expect that at this point. Instead we’re opening up with what’s “in the news”, specifically on a relatively sudden resurgence in the physical film photography industry. New camera bodies to choose from, old and new names returning to the table with novel t...

I’ve unboxed a lot of gadgets through the years… maybe too many? Okay, that’s a lie, and one of them I sincerely will never forget was shockingly almost 12 years ago when a box arrived on my desk from Microsoft that contained, in their minds at least, the next-big-thing in Personal Computing…  See, just a couple years prior, a certain company in Cupertino changed the landscape with the announcemen...

If it hasn’t come up before (and I’m pretty sure it has), we really love to cover tech events around here… they’re gadget-fueled bonding experiences that have a history littered with moments ranging from the first iPhone to the Surface RT, game changing shows of force like the original Nintendo Switch announcement to the “less than well received” debut of the Xbox One… there’s just something elect...

It’s no secret, we’ve talked a lot about iPads lately… first it was what did we want Apple to announce… then it was what did Apple actually announce… and now, today, we’ve spent the last two weeks hands-on with those very devices and guess what… we still don’t feel we’ve got the whole story…  I’ll cut to the chase… these devices are great. They’re thin, light, fast, rock incredible displays and in...

I will admit, some weeks I struggle more than others to come up with this intro… occasionally though, the struggle is still real, but very different… how do I keep it shorter than the podcast itself? This is absolutely one of those weeks, because with Event-season in full swing and announcements coming in left and right, to say we’ve got plenty to talk about is beyond an understatement. OpenAI, Go...

This week on the Solid State Podcast, we engage in a bit it of loose “deja vu”… You might remember last time we were together it was all-things-iPad, but more specifically what we felt the future of the iPad should look like. No true predictions, certainly nothing based on facts or even strong rumors, just if Cupertino were foolish enough to turn their iPad factory over to three gadget nerds for a...

This week on the Solid State Podcast, we grab our crystal ball and do our best to tune in to the future… a future of one device to rule them all, a single metal and glass slab that pops into a keyboard case, runs every app imaginable, and seamlessly transitions into a productivity workhorse at the literal push of a button…  See, Apple would happily have us believe that this exact device already ex...

This week on the Solid State Podcast, we play a little game of “What if” versus “What’s next”… See, we’re at an interesting time of the year where most of the big announcements are still to come… sure CES has come and gone, some phones have hit the market, and freshly Copilot-emblazoned laptops are among us… but really, the majority of what 2024 does (or doesn’t) have in store for us is still to c...

This week on the Solid State Podcast, we go a little bit… wide….. You should be used to it by now, but especially on what many consider a “slower” time of year for tech news in general we saw it as a good opportunity to slow down and have an earnest conversation about a company that we normally have on the show in the context of a new device, gadget, or service that we can’t wait to hand over our...

“Any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic”… it’s a quote we’ve all heard countless times and these days is dangerously close to becoming overused if not outright tired… but even so, it remains one of my favorites because its founded in so much truth… I remember the first time I put on an Oculus Rift developer kit and was suddenly transported to a far off world, it was n...

Several aspects of the “human condition” will forever remain funny to me… one of which is our never ending desire for “the next best thing”… when I was a kid I distinctly remember dreaming of a future promised to me by the Science Fiction tv shows, movies, and books of the day… communicators, video calls, holodecks… I wanted it all!  So now, in 2024, I sit here with my smartphone beside me that ca...

Several years ago, we had a fire in our garage that claimed several of our cars… I am (if you haven’t figured it out yet) something of a creature of habit… So, seeing as a very much liked the truck I drove at the time, I promptly went down to the dealership, worked with Insurance, and purchased effectively the same truck I had sadly lost. It had, for all intents and purposes, the same engine, the...

There are a lot of tired cliches in the world… everything from “bring an umbrella and it won’t rain” to “a watched pot never boils”… but the funny apart about them is often times they feel like an inescapable truth of reality! I know full well keeping an umbrella in my car is not going to keep the sun shining, but I swear to you my tea kettle only heats up if I leave the room… So when we start tal...

This week on the Solid State Podcast, we’re trying something a little bit different, while shockingly still the same… See we realize, very intentionally, this show covers a lot of ground. From big tech to tiny brands you’ve never heard of, game changing gadgets to video game controllers… it’s all over the map… And much of the time, those stories are relatively one-and-done… Samsung announces a new...

Loss is one of the most inescapable aspects of the human condition… so many things that we have and enjoy can, in any number of ways, “go away” someday… Now that’s not meant to start this weeks episode off on a down note, but the stark reality is one that we often try to ignore until it rears it head… This afternoon, Microsoft will be taking to the internet-airwaves (in Podcast form, no less) to a...

This week on the Solid State Podcast, there’s no getting around it… we’re all over the place in (hopefully) all the best ways possible! We kick things off by taking a hands-on look at the Free Write Alpha, a device with an intentionally narrow vision of what it wants to be and how it might unlock the creativity laying dormant in our ever-more distracted minds… Then things really go off the rails a...

We’ve talked many times on this show about how the smartphone space is reaching a state of… let’s call it “advanced maturity”… On any given day you can pick up just about any given mainstream “flagship” phone and you’re going to more-or-less have the same experience… a (normally) over-sized slab of metal, glass, and plastic that powers on to become a gateway to the internet… But even in this perio...

On this week’s Solid State Podcast, your three presenters get a much-needed chance to “return to form” after a seemingly endless run of events, announcements, and New Year coverage… and we figured there was not better way to do that than a good-old-fashioned "Parts Bin" episode to sprint through everything else happening in tech as 2024 gets up to speed… Apple news kicks things off with both ends...

Most groups of friends have their go-to inside jokes… the things you know will get a rise out of someone because, frankly, they just know you that well… my inner circle is no different: for some its a favorite sports team not performing well, others its pointing out the oh-so-specific OCD’s that make us “tick”, and for me, well, anyone who knows me well enough can walk up on any given day, ask me...

It’s a new year on the Solid State Podcast, and we’re kicking it off the only way we know how…  In the middle of the Nevada desert, surrounded by a halo of lights that never sleep, are miles and miles of convention center halls, meeting rooms, and shadowy corners where once a year a critical mass of the technology industry descends with their wares, ideas, and moonshots to pitch the rest of the wo...