Solid State Podcast

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 hou...

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 ...

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 fina...

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 tha...

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 defi...

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...

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, wit...

Many times we come to this show, whether it sounds like it or not… relatively prepared. The topic is clear, the message has been more-or-less thought through, and the banter, well, nothing can stop that from meandering… 

Other weeks though, it’s just not that easy. Tech is funny because it honestly orbits around the gravity of several “big” moments throughout the year. CES, Unpacked, WWDC, etc. ...

When something get’s sufficiently commoditized… it almost reaches a point where you start thinking about that one “thing” as a single, cohesive object rather than the sum of its parts. For many, a car is a thing you sit inside of, press a button or two, and you’re suddenly being propelled down the highway to your eventual destination. For the petrolhead, though, that same car is a sympho...

Well… there’s no other way to say it… welcome to 2026 everyone! Yes I know, the more things change the more they stay the same and all that. Resolutions made and near-instantly broken. Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace flooded with all the… umm… “stuff” from last year that you need to get rid of to make room for all the… yeah… “stuff” that magic...

A new year somehow always presents a… certain type of friction. 

We’re tempted, all at once, to think back reflectively on our most recent past while at the same time told to be visionaries about our quickly-approaching future (and beyond)…

Well, you’ve likely been listening long enough to know there’s… not a whole lot of what we would call “visionary” happening here at the So...

If you want a sneak peek of the future, you just have to take a close enough look at the past… Different versions of that overall premise have popped up throughout my life, and I have to say it’s one that I hold particularly dear and true. The lens of history is such a valuable tool, especially when trying to get a sense of where we’re going as a society, as a person, or, in this case, in tech in general…

...

The meaning of things can just… change with time. It’s inescapable, nostalgia is very much a thing, and it’s honestly a tired trope at this point too. That said… sometimes when a thing changes, people insist on acting like it hasn’t and that might just border on (or run right over) the edge of insincerity. 

So with that in mind, it’s time for some real talk. In just a couple short weeks, t...

Sometimes it’s hard to remember a time before the internet, but I do remember shelves in my bedroom growing up dedicated to an Encyclopedia collection. And then, some years later, I’d get another CD at our local bookstore guaranteeing several hours of access to America Online… and then once, well, online… I was certainly on the internet but that was a world without Google. Years after that Google was a cor...

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…

Un...

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...

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 Gadge...

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...

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 d...