Solid State Podcast

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 exists on store shelves across the wo...

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 come…

AI has obviously been at the 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 money in exchange for… 

Except this...

“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 nothing less than magic…

I also rem...

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 can place me in contact with anyone I...

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 same tires, the same… everything. ...

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 talking about “layers of security”, it...

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 phone, and people buy it… Canon re...

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 announce, in their own words… an “Xb...

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 as we journey back to a world of cas...

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 period of same-phone-different-day exper...

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 of the the spectrum… a look back at...

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 how many phones I’m carry, and prep...

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 world that their product is the next ...

There’s no other way to say it… 2023 was a year. Frankly, at times it literally felt like a year and a half…

It’s been a year of incredible highs and rock-bottom lows, as the technology industry has come to terms with a dramatically changing market and economic landscape while also charging forward (possibly with semi-reckless abandon) into an AI-fueled future that no one actually seems sure what it will look like but everyone some...

There’s no easier way to say it… we buy a lot of tech on this show! It is, after all, literally or jobs… but long before that, from childhood it has been our collective passion. We’ve talked on this very show about our earliest PCs, most treasured gadgets, and the genuine love we have for the silly plastic and metal boxes of components strewn through our lives… 

On the flip side of that, of course, is that much of this tech isn’t e...

Some sights are just not uncommon, and this time of year possibly the most common site is a small (or not so small) pile of cardboard boxes adorning the front step of about every house you walk by in any given neighborhood… 

Sometimes its purely pedestrian… I will publicly admit I have a recurring box of paper towels sent to said doorstep because, sadly, I can’t be bothered…

But, as I alluded to before, this time of year is just a ...

Some stories around tech are entirely too predictable because, well… there are humans involved and at the end of the day there’s just only so many ways for us to try and on-up each other. That said, when the story starts to involve a nonprofit, a holding company, a very much for-profit company, a multi-trillion dollar investor, and the whole thing revolve around the future of Artificial Intelligence… well… that’s a cocktail of Unpr...

This week on the Solid State Podcast, the full band is back together and we’re here to pick back up on the ever-evolving conversation around AI and more specifically the marketplace that is beginning to take real shape around it. 

Ever since it burst onto the scene last fall, AI has continued to dominate the moment around products, services, and the companies that bring them to you. It seems that no member of Big Tech can take the ...