- feeds
- popular
- recent
- reader
- about
- story
- technologies
- what is rss
- connect
- dmca
- contact
- Feed Preview Hypercritical
Episode 100: 100: Metacritical
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin end the Hypercritical podcast with a discussion of the show itself, followed by a final Q&A where Dan asks the questions and John attempts to provide sensible answe...
Episode 99: 99: New Siracusa County Bros. U
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin follow up on iTunes 11 and Apple's continuing failure to grok online services, then discuss the Wii U, starting with the painful setup process and continuing on to ...
Episode 98: 98: Hardware Machismo
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin follow up on taping out silicon chips, Apple's seemingly bottomless silicon ambitions, and the pitfalls of labeling people, then discuss Twitterrific 5, the new Goo...
Episode 97: 97: Idle Doodles
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin follow up on silicon chip making and misogyny in geek culture, then dive into Hypercritical's first—and likely only—listener Q&A show. All questions entertained...
Episode 96: 96: Blue Peter
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin reveal John's Wii U in transit, then talk more about Apple, Intel, ARM, and silicon chip fabrication, and finally, the Fake Geek Girl meme, misogyny, and problems w...
Episode 95: 95: Black Friday
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin discuss the upcoming end of this show, more on Intel vs. ARM, Apple's CPU/GPU needs, and the newly revealed internals of the Wii U console and GamePad. Links for ...
Episode 94: 94: Shrink, Shrink, Shrink!
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin revisit the topic of voting technology, then discuss the possibility of Apple using ARM processors instead of Intel processors in its Macs: RISC vs. CISC, process n...
Episode 93: 93: A Magic Elf in My Computer
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin talk more about Forstall's departure from Apple, Surface storage, and Fusion Drive, then discuss US voting technology, Google voice search, and how Apple's design p...
Episode 92: 92: The Tim Cook Era
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin discuss the latest information about Apple's Fusion Drive and the first big executive reshuffling at Apple in the post-Steve Jobs era: Forstall and Browett are out;...
Episode 91: 91: Adolescence
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin discuss the new hardware announced at the October 23rd Apple event: the latest Retina MacBook Pro, whether the new iMac is too skinny or too fat, the little informa...
Episode 90: 90: Salad Days
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin ponder the upcoming Apple event, assess picayune physical details of the iPhone 5 and iPod touch, compare the newly announced pricing for the Microsoft Surface to i...
Episode 89: 89: Lazy Sunday
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin relax on a Sunday afternoon and chat about Apple's taste for brute force solutions, the foibles of decentralized systems like Tent and email, and The Magazine, Marc...
Episode 88: 88: Nobody Leaves Email
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin discuss the latest events in the burgeoning App.net community, then explore the competing(?) Tent.io protocol for decentralized real-time social networking. Links...
Episode 87: 87: Smarter and Harder
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin follow up on Apple's slippery little devices and Apple's mapping woes, then discuss the new iPod touch and iPod nano. John's hypothetical Ferrari is briefly mention...
Episode 86: 86: Naked Robotic Core
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin discuss the new iPhone 5: its physical design, the case for cases, the new lightning connector, and Apple's trouble with maps. Let the iPhone 6 speculation begin? ...
Episode 85: 85: Just Check the Checkbox!
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin discuss all the things that went wrong during John's Mountain Lion ebook publishing experience. There's more than enough blame to go around. Please note that this e...
Episode 84: 84: Spared No Expense
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin discuss Amazon's new Kindle and Kindle Fire products. Is Amazon Apple's most dangerous competitor, or are the two companies not really in competition at all? Who is...
Episode 83: 83: Dishonorable
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin discuss the Apple v. Samsung court case, the near-comprehensive rumors and leaks about the next iPhone, the possible internals of the rumored iPad mini, and which c...
Episode 82: 82: The Opposite of Comprehensive
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin finally complete their discussion of John's Mountain Lion review. Topics include power management, UI simplification, automatic termination, Facebook integration, a...
Episode 81: 81: Channels of Control
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 ...
Episode 80: 80: Memory Palace
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin continue to discuss John's review of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. On this episode: iCloud storage APIs and user interface, sandboxing, Gatekeeper, Retina/HiDPI, Scene K...
Episode 79: 79: Grandpa Uncle Joe
John Siracusa is on vacation this week, so we instead present its ersatz replacement, 'Kindacritical', with Dan Benjamin, Marco Arment, and Merlin Mann. Links for this episode: Macintosh 512K -...
Episode 78: 78: Sins of the Father
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin discuss—what else?—John's review of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. There's so much to cover that this will have to be a multi-epsiode topic. On this episode: purchase...
Episode 77: 77: Nucleation Site
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin talk more about a potential smaller iPad, OUYA's challenges, what makes a successful Kickstarter project, how the Penny Arcade Kickstarter could have been more attr...
Episode 76: 76: Selling a Dream
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,...
Episode 75: 75: Just a Dinosaur
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 cont...
Episode 74: 74: Everybody Wants to Rule the World
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 possibilit...
Episode 73: 73: 22 Degrees
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 ...
Episode 72: 72: Seven Levels of Air Quotes
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...
Episode 71: 71: Bristling With Controls
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: ...
Episode 70: 70: Deja Vu
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 nu...
Episode 69: 69: Sport of Kings
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 Pro...
Episode 68: 68: Patent Hands
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, t...
Episode 67: 67: A Pill That Helps with Whatever
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...
Episode 66: 66: The Housewives of Siracusa County
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 produce...
Episode 65: 65: Look Right into the Eyes of Your Sweetie
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 characteris...
Episode 64: 64: You Will Die Instantly!
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...
Episode 63: 63: Talking to the Bear
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 co...
Episode 62: 62: A Sack Containing Scum from a Pond
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin try to put the topic of car engine noises to bed, then discuss value of "enterprise" businesses, RIM's possible future as a services company, Readability's business...
Episode 61: 61: I Ran Out of Bombs Long Ago
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin discuss the display of large images on iOS devices, Apple's latest web standards proposal and "rogue" implementation in WebKit, RIM's new enterprise-centric strateg...
Episode 60: 60: Reversing the Polarity
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin discuss the puzzling UI of iPhoto for IOS, the magnetic polarity of iPad Smart Covers, the Apple TV's ability to work with any remote, the iPad's lack of a number i...
Episode 59: 59: Safari is Apple's Google
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin follow up on John's TiVo and smoke detector woes and the angst about the lack of a number after the name of the new iPad. John reviews his new Apple TV. Finally, th...
Episode 58: 58: No More Numbers For You / The Four Tuners
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin do some brief follow up on file systems, then dive into this week's Apple press event: the new Apple TV, the new iPad, specs vs. product names vs. Apple PR vs. sani...
Episode 57: 57: Computational Skeuomorphism
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin talk more about file systems: the origins of Btrfs, how file systems might change in the new age of SSDs, the possibility of a Grand Unification of storage and memo...
Episode 56: 56: Belt and Suspenders
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin talk about file systems: what they do, what makes a good one, and who needs a new one, badly. (Spoiler: it's Apple.) File systems discussed: Microsoft's ReFS, ZFS, ...
Episode 55: 55: Region of Pain
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin discuss this week's announcement of OS X Mountain Lion: what it means for John's reviews, how the new release schedule might influence adoption and reliability, and...
Episode 54: 54: Public Service Announcement
There's no Hypercritical this week, so we put together something special for you instead. Links for this episode: Kindacritical, a special episode with Dan Benjamin, Merlin Mann, and Marco Arme...
Episode 53: 53: Brad Pitt Gets to Contribute
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin revisit gamification in education, talk briefly about the Nest thermostat, then engage in an ever-so-slightly more considered discussion of Wikipedia, attempting to...
Episode 52: 52: Marked for Deletion
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin talk more about iBooks Author, Apple's real and stated motivations for entering the textbook market, and what really matters in education. This is followed by a lon...
Episode 51: 51: Unjustified Confidence
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin briefly recap the iPhone ringer/silent switch controversy, then discuss the new iBooks Author application, Apple's ebook ambitions and prospects, and the role of te...
Episode 50: 50: Maximum Deflection in All Directions
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin revisit the world of console controllers, addressing the flood of listener feedback by expanding the discussion to include aftermarket and third-party controllers, ...
Episode 49: 49: Pinching the Harmonica
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin discuss iPad use by three-year-olds, why non-gamers might consider the "Xbox" name a proxy for all of console gaming, the Wii generational hardware conundrum, and f...
Episode 48: 48: Blue Ocean
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin briefly indulge in more grammar questions, then revisit the consequences of HyperCard's demise, why we're all still talking about the Kindle Fire, using music and m...
Episode 47: 47: Brute Force Attack
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin talk about low-stakes grammar issues, the continuing debate about partisanship in tech writing, more theories about an Apple TV product, the origins and fate of "fr...
Episode 46: 46: Not Entirely Nefarious
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin revisit complaints about Siri's apparent biases, reconsider the fake-book chrome in iBooks, explore an interesting new conception of an Apple TV set, and use John G...
Episode 45: 45: Star Wars is Not a Blog Post
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin follow up on a host of topics: what ails Microsoft, the (slow, partial) democratization of corporate IT, the people vs. George Lucas, perpetual copyright, applicati...
Episode 44: 44: A Little Bit More Sad
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin talk about what ails Microsoft. What could the former titan of the technology world have done differently in the past two decades that would have prevented its decl...
Episode 43: 43: The Scorpion and the Frog
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin continue their discussion of Walter Isaacson's authorized biography of Steve Jobs, starting with listeners' reactions to the last episode, then (finally) talking ab...
Episode 42: 42: The Wrong Guy
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin discuss Walter Isaacson's authorized biography of Steve Jobs. Topics include Isaacson's failings as an author and biographer, the technical cluelessness on display ...
Episode 41: 41: The Homer
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin are joined by special guest Jeff Atwood, cofounder of the Stack Exchange Q&A network and creator of the popular programming blog codinghorror.com. John and Jeff try...
Episode 40: 40: When The Hobby Light Goes Off
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin discuss what it's going to take for Apple to field a television product that's finally something more than a "hobby." Attached box vs. full TV set, apps vs. channel...
Episode 39: 39: Quasimodo Backpack
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin talk more about Siri in theory and in practice, and how iCloud is different than MobileMe, with its own set of problems. Plus more complaints about the Star Wars bl...
Episode 38: 38: Virtually Spotless
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin discuss TiVo Premiere Elite's potential to not be as horrible as the TiVo Premiere, the expectations for and reality of Siri, Google's new Dart programming language...
Episode 37: 37: A Story of Triumph
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin talk about the death of Steve Jobs: personal remembrances, the less-obvious lessons of his life, and the dangers of his deification. Also, misspeaking vs. failing t...
Episode 36: 36: Wedge
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin discuss Amazon's new tablets, the Google technologies and Amazon cloud services that stand behind them, and what making money by "selling the blades" implies about ...
Episode 35: 35: Wrestling an Alligator
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin talk about the Netflix/Qwikster debacle and the big picture in the TV and movie industries, then continue their exploration of the Windows 8 Metro user interface. T...
Episode 34: 34: Pride in Craftsmanship
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin mourn the continuing shameful stewardship of the cultural touchstone that is Star Wars, then dive into the Windows 8 Metro user interface and Microsoft's prospects ...
Episode 33: 33: Square Bracket Colon Smiley
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin discuss the origins and suitability of Markdown, including why John doesn't use it and why you might want to, and why the entire PC industry can't seem to create a ...
Episode 32: 32: The Next Big Move
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin discuss the future of Apple without Steve Jobs. What decisions defined the Jobs II Era, and can Apple continue to make such big moves without the big man at the top...
Episode 31: 31: Strong Arguments for and Against
John Siracusa and Ryan Irelan discuss the future of the Mac Pro, what HP's exit from the PC business and Google's acquisition of Motorola mean for Microsoft, and whether or not Amazon should buy ...
Episode 30: 30: Paths in the Grass
In Dan Benjamin's absence, John Siracusa and Ryan Irelan follow up on the seemingly never-ending list of features in BBEdit and LaunchBar, take a side trip into the world of "haxies" and system e...
Episode 29: 29: In Too Deep
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin discuss Lion’s quittin’ ways, people who choose to turn off Dock indicator lights, the merits of a "clean install" of Mac OS X, Mac application launchers, and B...
Episode 28: 28: Trust, But Verify
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin talk more about Lion, following up on the animation and disk encryption topics from last week, then diving into sandboxing and the state of the file system. ARC dis...
Episode 27: 27: Nakedly Optimistic
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin discuss John's review of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. Topics covered: autosave, scroll bars, scroll direction, graphical changes, animation, disk encryption, plus some detai...
Episode 26: 26: White Smoke
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin continue to wait for the release of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. In the meantime, topics include Facebook's use of MySQL, some of the technology behind Google+, the 5by5 Sho...
Episode 25: 25: Invisible Software
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin talk about why webOS is slow, what's wrong with Apple's digital distribution mechanisms, why Google+ is a really big deal (for Google, anyway), and the hidden world...
Episode 24: 24: Sometimes It Hurts
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin discuss Mac speech recognition software, how webOS is or isn't like Mac OS X, Apple's $50 Thunderbolt cable, how Google+ is different from Facebook, and what John t...
Episode 23: 23: No Sentence Left Behind
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin revisit Apple's data center software, Pixar's weaknesses, lame Mac malware, obnoxious Twitter integration, and (one last time!) toasters, then talk about how and wh...
Episode 22: 22: I Would Not Build Underground
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin decompress after WWDC, then discuss Apple's (apparent) iCloud data center strategy, comparing it to other successful online service companies: Amazon, Google, and F...
Episode 21: 21: Reading Playboy for the Articles
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin talk about WWDC: iCloud, iOS 5, Lion, and yes, John's toaster, a gift from fellow 5by5 hosts Marco Arment and Merlin Mann (a.k.a. The Best Guys Ever). Links for t...
Episode 20: 20: I've Got Nothing
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin discuss John's upcoming trip to WWDC, Twitter's strange gaps in functionality (and the third-party developers determined to fill them), the sale of NetNewsWire to B...
Episode 19: 19: Don't Make Me Read
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin talk toasters again, then discuss John's first computer love, the classic Macintosh Finder. Time constraints cut the love affair short, but the passion burns beyond...
Episode 18: 18: Worse and More Diverse
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin put the TV technology and PHP topics to bed, touch on SSD reliability again, then discuss what's wrong with Twitter and why toaster ovens are worse today than they ...
Episode 17: 17: Intruding Gooseneck
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin talk some more about TV technology, elaborate on why, exactly, PHP is a bad programming language, lament the "decontenting" of Apple hardware and the proprietary ha...
Episode 16: 16: The Soap Opera Effect
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin repent after two episodes on programming languages by discussing TV technology…after about 45 minutes of (so-called) follow-up on Apple's potential use of ARM CPU...
Episode 15: 15: The Bridges of Siracusa County
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin continue their discussion of high-level programming languages, now focusing on why all popular languages suck in some way, then transition into a hard look at Perl,...
Episode 14: 14: A Dark Age of Objective-C
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin revisit Apple's GUI history, complain about TiVo some more, then explore the possibility of another Copland-like crisis looming in Apple's future. What will replace...
Episode 13: 13: The Tortoise and the Hare
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin discuss some upcoming Pixar projects, Facebook's open datacenter initiative, Star Wars, and, finally, Apple’s philosophy and practice of UI consistency over the y...
Episode 12: 12: Nothing Is So Perfect
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin turn a critical eye towards last week's episode on criticism, then try to pick the single biggest challenge facing three different wildly successful companies: Goog...
Episode 11: 11: I Am the Steve Jobs of This Sandwich
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin revisit Apple's iLife island and Google's operational secret weapons, then talk about the nature of criticism, online and offline, from movies to cars to (finally) ...
Episode 10: 10: Like Giving a Machine Gun to a Baby
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin are briefly amused by iPhone 5 rumors, then dive head first into a ruthless analysis of Apple's online services, past and present. The sad conclusion: Apple sucks a...
Episode 9: 9: No iLife is an Island
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin further opine on the iPad 2 and the Apple Strategy Tax, then discuss Apple's anachronistic views on digital media management as embodied in the iLife suite and the ...
Episode 8: 8: A Cautionary Tale
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin vow never to talk about physics again, then discuss the new iPad and, finally, how Apple's expansion into so many new businesses has created a series of conflicts o...
Episode 7: 7: ThunderCats
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin talk a bit more about connectors before moving on to the big Apple news: new MacBook Pros with Thunderbolt i/o and the first developer preview release of Mac OS X L...
Episode 6: 6: Frivolous Things
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin reveal the many prosaic reasons for not owning an iPhone, then veer off on several non-tech tangents and never fully recover: RSI, travel phobia, a personal history...
Episode 5: 5: Slippery Little Pill
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin discuss Apple’s hardware blind spots: keyboards, dock connector, iPod/iPhone cases, laptop designs, and more. Links for this episode: Ars Technica review of the...
Episode 4: 4: iOS vs. The World
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin revisit Mac OS X Lion and TV devices, then discuss what it would take for iOS to achieve iPod-like world domination. Links for this episode: Experiment: One Week ...
Episode 3: 3: The Mouse is Not a Finger
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin do some follow-up on the topic of backups, then talk about possible motivations behind the Mac OS X Lion features Apple has revealed so far, the future of desktop c...
Episode 2: 2: Backup Vortex
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin tie up some loose ends from the TV show before talking about backups, the onus on Apple to make them work, Apple's past and present attempts, the failings of extern...
Episode 1: 1: Dream Crusher
John Siracusa and Dan Benjamin discuss the sad state of TV technology, why the TV situation is worse than music and even phones, why Apple has decided it can't solve this particular problem right...