Gadgetory

and welcome to the 359 podcast I'm BVG it is Thursday December 21st and it's episode 335 the final episode of 2017 full disclosure this is a filler episode again just because we are still on hiatus and this will be pre-recorded but appropriately enough Ben what are we talking about okay so today we're talking about the trend of nostalgia Tech and also sadly the tech that died in 2017 so we'll get to both in this action-packed final podcast of 2017 with nostalgia tackle let's start with that a nostalgia talk basically means stuff that existed like 10 20 years ago that tech companies decided to dust off the IP put it in a shiny new packaging sometimes it's not really an assignee new packaging it looks exactly the same as it did before but they're gonna sell it to you at a lot more than maybe it's worth many you're right miniaturize but pricier yeah and like sometimes it's just add color to it I think the best example of this is the Nokia 3310 which is the super cute candy bar phone that they decided to bring back with snake I think it had like a 2g connection but it it did or available in the US right I think it is coming to the US with 3G but I guess the big thing question for this is like why why is this happening not only with the Nokia 3310 but also with like a lot of many consoles what do you guys think I think people hate all the new tech stuff that's coming out right now or they're just kind of tired of it and there's just kind of a you know let's go back to the way things were but kind of also remembering oh wait they really weren't like that great once you really I think there was a lot of hype when the Nokia 330 10 was like making a comeback but I think the general review was no-one in this day and age should actually be using this right now well except for kids it might be a good thing to like give to your kid it's got really long battery life you can't really search the internet it's a very very simple phone and I I've repeatedly argued that there could actually be a market for something like it mm-hmm and also I mean what is it like the jitterbug phone that's yeah constantly similar lines and magazines that are targeted at very old people um it's like the same idea like there's a subset of people that are like this phone is too complicated for me I need something where it has a button yeah maybe maybe nine button may be one giant under the phone call start nine buttons to die on that's all I want okay do you agree with Alfred though that like this is just you know kind of we want to go back to a time in tech where tech wasn't so scary tech wise just like trying to like steal all of our information and yes advertising I mean like that was 2017 was a very good year of realizing how big and scary Twitter and Google and Facebook could be so maybe this was a backlash I mean like I think that's an interesting theory I don't know if I like I would I would want to think about it a little bit more before I jumped on to it completely well I think that's nostalgia generally is not just with tech or with the movies that you're watching or whatever any any time that you're kind of reminiscing about it's thinking about when things are simpler or easier only remembering the good parts of it but then like when you when you get it and you're like texting is impossible on this phone that's when you're like oh wait I do think people might have looked at like the NSA NES classic and the SNES classic differently though where there was essentially just these were really good games and I want to play them in the way that like I had played them because they they were available I'm like for old console like you could download it on your Nintendo switch or you could download on your Wii U or your 3ds even and you could play like Super Mario Brothers 3 but like I think people wanted the whole you know I want to sit next to my TV and plug in my controller and you're not gonna have to blow on a cartridge anymore like they've gotten rid of like part of the fun yeah it's logical they could have simulated the blowing on the cartridge yeah I think simulates a good word for that I think a lot of people wanted to simulate like just you know times when things weren't as crazy okay fair enough but like looking at it from a more cynical perspective do you guys see this as more of a money grab from Nokia Tendo arteries the moneygrab why wouldn't it be a money nostalgia's a greatest salesman out there mm-hmm I like that statement yeah for sure looking at the mini consoles specifically are there any that you guys have been really excited about or spend time with I think you got the SNES I didn't get any of them no you got one of them there I have the NES class yeah and it's in a box I'm probably gonna put it in my attic for next for the next wave of nostalgia 20 or 30 years from now and I'll be able to flip that thing so there's nothing better than nostalgia then you're the worst kind of treatment getting it out of the box so I don't want lassic classic coming in 2030 look I'm gonna make some I'm gonna make some like 30 year old neo millennial in the year 2045 super happy that they get the NES classic in box and that's great when it did come out though I didn't want to get one but it did remind me of a lot of great games on the Super Nintendo come out and I went and took a few extra steps to just make a Raspberry Pi mm and I played the games that I wanted on there that actually aren't on the SNES classic so that library was kind of limited yeah and but that was a lot of licensing problems I was very disappointed the Chrono Trigger wasn't on it this is this is a bit of like side zone but Jonah didn't you get to play like some version of duck hunt yeah in VR that's totally like hard it was a it was a VR reboot of it was called duck season not dumb time but they had the dog but they had the dog you have right you shoot the dog yet you can shoot the dog definitely shoot the dog I definitely shot the dog I were advocating anything about the phrase shoot the dog except in the video game oh absolutely let's let's I mean I'm a vegetarian like music but at least it might have been but I don't recall it being like it didn't like fire off that nostalgia like oh my gosh I totally remember this but in addition to it being like the game and the premise in the format of Conte also in the VR experience you started out in a living room that was totally like something out of stranger things like it was a very 80s in between levels of duck-hunt you would go back to this room and there would be like you could shoot at things in the room so you could shoot at like it just tapes and you can shoot at the television it would play like a retro commercial did you like that idea that feels like it's trying to it's a side element to the game you're there for the game but it's just kind of like funny what the VR there's so they're still exploring it so much that it's that's very typical in yards that you have a place where you can just kind of like knock things over and see what happens a little like sandbox sort of playroom but that retro Cade thing it's it's it's a design aesthetic in itself with like the neon sign and the font style why we know what the name of it is yeah it's very easily identifiable the same way like stainless steel is the 1950s diners and checkerboards and that kind of thing the the eighties aesthetic is very easy to identify yeah I kind of wonder like in 20 30 years from now how they're going to identify the the the design aesthetic I always wanted in circles it's all circular design stuff I mean if you look at Twitter like the avatar like they changed it from what it used to be into a circle Facebook followed after Instagram do the same thing so the rounding off of corners yep in general yeah and buns and manbo which is rounded off of corners in general right [Laughter] we also why don't why don't we switch topics so the tech that died in 27 yeah I don't know if you guys have to be fair so you're gonna bring up aim right yeah I was gonna start with aim yeah to be fair I feel like aims been dead for a very long time now I think now that they're just officially killing people like oh man I miss aim which I loved aim I really liked being on a mom I was gonna you rubes two three five seven no but but that's what a lot of people's screen names right Benny any rubes yeah anyway - this has been dead for a long time which I guess is why they officially killed it I suppose by what I mean I will say this I think aim was really the first way that we all communicated with each other online would you say it opens some doors closing this one you know like we're all on gchat now we're all on slack facebook Messenger and all that stuff and I really do think aim was a peak precursor to all that I are see yeah but I aim mainstream yeah unfortunately even though it was one of the earliest in the market like that first mover advantage didn't actually yeah there's so many other messaging services most of them live on mobile really I don't even know like did aim have a mobile app yes okay yes it makes sense the big way but I guess I didn't have it in an absence of it it had it in the sense that you could text a number and then it would send something through your screen name like online superimpose this was like before the like whole age of like apps like aim was like pretty big on like the sidekick from t-mobile and everyone was on name there I really appreciate it just because it was like it was the first place where I had like developed the concept of like online friends hmm where like I would talk like with this one person in Florida and Michigan like all the time that I met through like an MMO it was really cool it's like World of Warcraft and all that stuff oh and you would like you traded your yeah we'd hang out we'd like playing the game with each other and then it'd just be like oh I'm signing off but like because I don't want to play anymore but like if you want to keep chatting I'm like here on this screen name did you ever talk to either of those people on the phone no no no did you know their real names yeah okay yeah it's a really interesting name gave me a false sense of importance because I felt like I always had to have it on in case I missed something happen it was the the first experience of FOMO and I always felt it necessary to just have it running to the extent where if my parents needed to use the phone I'm waiting for an important message and that was kind of essentially I felt like it needed to be my own personal there wasn't where like without messenger was available like the same time as aim was but it wasn't like kosher yet to Facebook message people like I would get Facebook messages from people like freshman year in high school and then it just be like what is would you like some kind of loser kind of thing so using Facebook man yeah yeah it was like that so it'd be like I know there's been conversations for me that started on on facebook Messenger that would be like hey what's up I need the homework also what's your aim cuz that's when you transition from classmates a friend when you talk to them on aim okay look it's just like official at the time it was like just like this other thing you know I don't have any of your aim handles which means that I guess we haven't been friends this whole time old anyway handles that you would share publicly now that they're all gonna be dead track you down I was I was shockingly I was a real geek when I was a kid and did you end up here how did I ever never seen it I'm like a fish out of water and I really liked Greek and Roman mythology that was one of my geeky things and so one of my handles was IO the cow which is just from its from a Roman myth you didn't have any numbers no no one else wanted to be IO the cow is just me I'm not I'm not gonna share any of my like in between ones cuz I had gone through like kind of like a hip hop gangster phase were in transition yeah but my first my first one which is still goofy was dragon boy 11:03 which is just my birthday and I just like dragons a lot at the time who doesn't win dragons I still like your hands it sounds cool yeah that fits very well into aim what about you Ruby like it may have been some derivative of the dude man dude which I used for I think AOL and Yahoo is my twitter handle - no no it is not my Twitter handle but I wanted to avoid to avoid using numbers I just kept extending for such I would dude then dude man then dude man dude somebody out there was actually dude man dude so I did though dude man dude what a hack I wonder of cyclical technology and how we're seeing so much retro stuff come back around I don't know if aim necessarily as a platform we'll come back around but I wonder if the general practice of like hokey screen names fun silly American screen names will ever come back into the limelight somehow whether in practice or in another platform I was thinking about that actually and you actually do see that nowadays like hokey name stuff on Instagram with like younger people true they don't like and fake YouTube comments yeah so I brought this up in a conversation that I had with a friend who like you're not like as new parents I don't know if you guys do this do you squat emails for your kids yeah I haven't I do yeah because my kids last name is impossible right so no one's gonna do I talked about this with somebody though where I was basically yo your kids not gonna use that for like until it like they're 18 or so really good point because like they're not gonna think that it's cool to have like their name like just out like as their actual they have to send a job resume yeah exactly yeah they're not gonna use it to like they're 18 or something I they're probably make like some like goofy name which is actually really popular on Instagram right now like even I I switched my name to like a like the same goofy name I used on AIM on Instagram and then I just like squatted my like my professional name cuz like somebody's gonna try to take that so yeah one of the guidance counselor in college told me that I shouldn't put on my resume head ciclo and i yahoo.com which is a head Psychlo if anybody knows is from Battlefield Earth mm-hmm he's the head ciclo tell me more she's like the name she immediately identify it's like I don't remember remember but I liked it I loved that movie so much it was such as like a goofy movie you were wrong it was it was a really funny movie it was hilarious and yeah I even had like a yahoo handle for a while I since deleted so are anybody once had ciclo believe it's no longer squatting yeah full disclosure to make things fair here one of my first screen names was Riddick Oh 7-7 because I love terrible pitch black no pitch black was kind of awesome weight is the same as Riddick like pitch black started off as like a single and then they decided tonight he's like a franchise out of that core and you can make arguments either way I love to pitch black I thought that was bad I was like I need to break up with this guy that was my first introduction of Indies like I didn't really know what the future was going to hold I thought it was awesome I thought he was like cutting up aliens like I want to do that that's me right so aim was the first time it didn't it wasn't known as this was the first time I sub tweeted mmm even though did you put away messages away message like your status updates like before Facebook existed a wedge on a more like status updates and I totally sub like sub tweeted yeah I would always have a way messages that weren't actually like when I was in a way yeah they were just like it yeah the status exactly and yeah I definitely did that I go I mean I leave my slack on the way all the time yeah just like shoutouts all the people who loved talking smack about me behind my back wait so you wait are you saying you don't leave like Alkaline Trio song lyrics in your away message because that's what I did I did that too but my favorite it was still you know how a name if you did percent and it show these screen names of whoever was looking at it I didn't know yeah so I would always do like percent n is a jerk and then people like hey oh call me out like that I remember that you were that was clever that's a deep cut I have no idea I'm talking about I know what he's talking about um I I did want to be essentially mirrored yeah but you should be like the Facebook prank where's like check out this profile of this idiot and it's like a link that goes back to your own profile no matter who clicks it har-har and then yeah one other one this has been a like a very enjoyable aim conversation but do you guys want to talk about let's say like 3d TV or snapchat spectacles and yes I know snapchat spectacles aren't actually dead but it's been big crashing light I feel really dumb for buying them now I like yeah you saw the whole story about waiting in line for them and stuff and I like yeah this is gonna be cool it was an amazing marketing ploy yeah super really stupid because like I kept thinking about like yeah this is just like when I bought the first Android phone this is I'm gonna be able to tell people in a few years like I got the first one be so cool and well so you I think have used vesicles more than any of us why did it why did my biggest issue with it was that it killed my phone battery life to the point was like it is not worth it to like and also it'd just be like I'd have to be wearing it at all times for it to be useful yeah and if I have to take something and put it on my face I like to record something I might as well just take my phone out and read so it didn't it didn't actually have increased utility yeah yeah and it just felt like I was forcing it sometimes too much we're like so when I had it it was around Thanksgiving when I got it so I did stuff like oh here's me like on my bike yeah cuz like I basically did all the stuff like you need two hands to record so like oh here's me like on my bicycle and here's me cooking a meal together and then I think about if I didn't have the spectacles I wouldn't be sharing this at all cuz I don't go on snapchat that much to begin with so I'm like I'm really only sharing this because I've X ecause I'm not like the spectacles don't enhance the experience they like ya force the experience I like there's no point of me having this and then the second point was I'm like killing my battery life mmm so I was like this is this isn't really worth it but it is cool to just sit on my mantel or something like that and then it kind of all went to hell after they started making them available on like Amazon so anybody could buy it because then it just stopped being this commodity and it just became like or it became a come on yeah oh yeah stop being this yeah I remember that like on Twitter anybody that they need tech reporters that had gotten their hands on snapchat spectacles early would always like put it in there like on their profile pics and be like haha I got this cool new thing whatever and yeah I totally crashed and burned him like wasn't that it wasn't as impressive as it could have been and it wasn't as impressive as it like snapshots like hope for a bunch of different yes it was was that like they they were so all in they were the spectacle is that they're like we're a camera company yeah change their entire identity I mean they tried to yeah I felt really dumb but I will say I don't think I feel as dumb as Evan Spiegel does I think you always feels right you know things go wrong I was just ahead of the game he's a tech CEO what are you right back you know like that's just that's how they operate so so we are almost out of time let's make predictions real quick to close out next year what's going to come back with no sounds like from the dead wand or fail all at the same time Atari box is coming next year so it's another mini console but not from the NES you know those consoles are gonna be I don't know for lack of a better word a plague for a long time and I'm yeah I don't mean that to take that negatively I don't have anything against so many consoles I think they're fun but I don't think that's gonna slow down they're all gonna be cyclical again we will see we will eventually see a mini switch I'm looking forward to it I will say that like with all these other like many consoles though unless Sony gets into it I do i order like Sega which they have I think they're all going to fail just because the Sega is a third party though yeah that too like there's really no quality control Plus like so that makes me apprehensive about the inevitable Dreamcast my favorite vault yeah that unlike the Atari thing that you're talking I don't like I think they're overestimating how much people like aren't nostalgic for like Atari like you know like I can make the argument for NES classic or a Super Nintendo classic where like people like grew up like loving these games I don't think there's anybody that's like oh man I really missed pong and like Space Invader but that's hard for you to say because you didn't grow up on those yeah funny people still did so by the time the timing works out that first it's the elemental eyes are already available like through apps and all that stuff it's kind of hard to get super mario is NES but like not legally it's like the cost of anything in this super low like like the thing is already created there's already a baked an audience that's why it's so easy to make these mini consoles also covered indirect consoles live as long mm-hmm because the manufacturing error is intentional manufacturing error so NES has outlived GameCubes so you're some bad example GameCubes actually literally I want to see mine its shelf porn that's what it is more than anything like even if they do end up collecting dust relatively little dust because they're so small you should want to keep having this stuff on their shelves I think that's the biggest part of it it's a good point so what's what's gonna die next year I mean like I'm gonna go out on sort of a limb a bit and say the Apple home pod it's been delayed to next year I think it's overpriced and yeah the still just this is just a theory by that that one may end up being a dud and an unfortunate one for Apple so we'll say I might be totally wrong but if we're making predictions that's the one I'm probably not probably Bitcoin is a very good it's gonna go up to a hundred thousand before it flames out do you have any on my beat there's a lot of in digital media there's a lot of these me to video services that nobody uses like go 98 Verizon I'm just waiting for like when they all just start getting like a wave didn't they just shut down fullscreen fullscreen s pod their subscription video service shut down earlier this year that's a shame I had literally just kind of got it in the fullscreen they have some really fun and during original content on there but not enough of a library to support anything sincerely long-term yeah but they have some really great stuff from like grace Helbig and exclusives by the Hannah Hart mamrie Hart and I really enjoyed that stuff it's a shame to see that go away cuz the app also works really well yeah you know actually I hadn't tried their app but like diet like complete opposite as I know the go 90 app doesn't work very well every time I've use it as always I've never tried to go 90 yeah I'm very many people have r.i.p so there's a lot of those there's like go 90 and there's something called C so and there's like all I know that one yeah there's all these um little doll these traditional media companies like we're gonna put a lot of money into content and put it on the digital stuff in an app people pay us money for it's like maybe mmm I know we're gonna see foreign meteoric rise and fall in a hurry Tamagotchi forever whatever that is Tamagotchi forever coming to mobile next year game will mark Tamagotchis 20th anniversary this is gonna be the Pokemon go of 2018 yeah uh yeah I can't wait to write about that everyday here that's gonna be super fun 50 ways to keep your Tamagotchi from dying 50 creative ways to kill your Tamagotchi yeah I think this atomic actually be hope sport in itself is how to kill a tamagotchi again yeah I want to see that in AR um is that are we are we done with 2017 is that it I think we've done for 2017 we're gonna chocolate balloon I'm so sad this is this has been such a fun podcast year I think is that for you moved yeah I'm about to start crying this has been fun you are my friend if I start crying I will short-circuit well anyways we have had a good year we are still on hiatus so for an extended period but we'll be back in early January we'll see you from the CES stage in Las Vegas and then regular shows will resume again sometime in later a couple weeks down the road we're not sure yet it's something yeah yeah yeah I'll be back when we're back yeah and anyway we look forward to seeing you all then thanks guys want me to do this or just somebody else when I called it 359 podcast is available on iTunes stitcher feedburner google prying eyes music in cisely Amazon echo that's hot and of course seen it yeah thank you thanks for thanks for ending 2017 like that it was super appreciated dude it's December 12th all right thanks everybody thanks for a great year we'll see in 2018