Hypercritical
Summary: A weekly talk show ruminating on exactly what is wrong in the world of Apple and related technologies and businesses. Nothing is so perfect that it can't be complained about. Hosted by John Siracusa & Dan Benjamin.
Podcasts:
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin discuss the latest round of Twitter API changes that further marginalize third-party "traditional" Twitter client applications, with the inevitable follow up about App.Net, the nascent Twitter-like service that takes money directly from its users, rather than selling access to its users to advertisers.
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin discuss the OUYA Android-based TV gaming console Kickstarter project, the unprecedented Penny Arcade Kickstarter project to remove ads from its web site for a year, and the Kickstarter phenomenon itself. Also, check the show notes to find a poll about doing an episode all about the PlayStation 3 game Journey.
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin discuss rumors of a new, smaller iPad, Marco Arment's experience with and reporting of this week's App Store data corruption problem, Apple's response, and the continuing, unhealthy separation of developers and their customers in the App Store.
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin discuss alternate motivations for the Microsoft Surface, Google's new Nexus 7 tablet, the history and value of reparability in computer hardware, and the possibility of electronics that "age well." Also, there's a robot that feels no shame.
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin discuss the Microsoft Surface. It's a tablet! It's an ultrabook! It runs Office, Windows, and your existing x86 applications…unless it's the ARM version. And why is Microsoft making hardware, anyway? It's all very intriguing.
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin discuss—what else?—WWDC: the hardware and software announcements, John's chances of getting his review done on time, John's WWDC survival gear, and the one time a year where he meets the fans face to face.
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin discuss the latest crop of iPhone 5 and WWDC rumors, E3 2012, the current state of the traditional game console market, and the elephant in the gaming living room: Apple.
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin discuss more optimistic prospects for a new Mac Pro, the latest round of iPhone 5 hardware rumors, and the intriguing possibilities for WWDC implied by the large number of sessions on the schedule that are labelled "To Be Announced."
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin talk a bit more about patents and copyright, revisit the sources of lag in human/computer interactions, revise the probabilities of retina-display Macs, MacBook Pros without ethernet ports, any Mac Pros ever again, and the various ways to deal with a possible taller iPhone screen.
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin, inevitably, revisit the topic of patents, attempting to address a wide array of listener feedback. For the hearty listeners that make it through the patent talk, there's a bonus discussion of the new MacBook Pro rumors, and a brief consideration of cutscenes and trailers in video games.
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin discuss the various ways that Apple takes money from transactions involving the App Store, lessons from gaming and gamers for the larger software world, why nothing is ever good enough when it comes to technology, the Instagram acquisition, and the sad state of the US patent system and how it might be fixed.
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin discuss meeting Apple employees at WWDC, the latest round of iPhone rumors, RubyMotion (a new product for writing iOS apps in Ruby), the distinction between producer, consumer, and performer in gaming and other arts, The Kids Today, games as art, and Dropbox-related App Store rejections.
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin discuss the WWDC ticket sales kerfuffle and the potential future of the conference, then revisit the topic of gaming as a form of art with some uncommon characteristics. Finally, the new Gmail user interfaces goes under the microscope.
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin revisit software updates (paid or otherwise), then discuss various screen size possibilities for the next iPhone, the historical and ongoing dilution of the concept of a "gamer" (and Apple's role in that phenomenon), and the extremely unlikely possibility of any sort partnership between Valve and Apple.
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin talk more about paid upgrades in the Mac App Store, how Apple is reshaping the software market (intentionally or otherwise), Readability's role as a middleman as compared to another prominent middleman, the App Store, and finally, the Flashback malware scourge and what it says about Apple's preparedness.
