It wouldn’t be an Apple Event without every tech podcast in the world gathering to share their thoughts on what the fruit company had to announce. We’ve tried to take a bit of a different approach and share what we genuinely thought was interesting, as well as our personal views on whether you should upgrade.

Before we recorded, we opened up a little discussion thread on our original Substack site to get your thoughts about the event, and we’d like to take the chance to say a huge thank you to everyone who has already commented. If you have any thoughts about this event, we’d love to hear from you, so send a note over to [email protected], leave a comment on the post, or start a discussion in Goodpods.

Just a quick note to say that we recorded this on 8th September, just over 24 hours after the actual event. Since we recorded, we’re aware there’s been more information come out about some of the things we talked about.

If you liked this episode or any of our content, we’d greatly appreciate any little bit of support you can throw our way over at our Ko-Fi page.

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This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit crossedwires.substack.com

Although we’re not a retro-exclusive show, we do seem to have a lot of guests from the retro community; this week is no different as it’s my delight to be joined by Dan Wood and Ravi Abbott who make up two-thirds of The Retro Hour podcast.

Rather than looking at specific systems, we had a more broad chat about what makes retro so fascinating for us all, what some of our favourite systems are, as well as reliving some fond memories and self-incriminating confessions.

What are your views on retro? Do you disagree with what we consider to be a retro system, do you have memories about encounters with systems, or maybe you had involvement in the development of the systems themselves, or software for them? We’d love to hear from you, so send a note over to [email protected], leave a comment on the post, or start a discussion in Goodpods.

If you liked this episode or any of our content, we’d greatly appreciate any little bit of support you can throw our way over at our Ko-Fi page.

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Yes, it’s another retro-themed episode, but with a focus on not only vintage Macs but also the world of desktop publishing and pre-press that was shaken up by the arrival of the Macintosh and tools like Aldus PageMaker and QuarkXpress.

It was a genuine pleasure to chat with Dan, I hope you find his experience and knowledge as informative and entertaining as I did.

I’d also like to say a huge thank you to everyone all for your patience, this episode was delayed by a week due to me having to move home and all the fun and games that entails.

Do you have memories of using older PowerPC or 68k Macs, maybe you worked in print or desktop publishing. If so, we’d love to hear from you, so send a note over to [email protected], leave a comment on the post, or start a discussion in Goodpods.

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For those of you wondering about the title of this episode, well you’ll have to listen to figure that out. Pig eating habits aside, it was a genuine pleasure to chat with Ryan about his time supporting various Sim-related titles by Maxis, as well as hearing the rather innovative way he got the job.

We also take a look at a console that, I have to admit, I didn’t know much about until this episode. Known in Japan as the PC Engine and the TurboGrafx in North America, it was a 4th generation game console with some impressive features.

Ryan has also recently launched his own line of replacement inlays for the PC Engine / TurboGrafx and NES controllers. We chat about some of the challenges he faced in getting these made and launched.

Do you have memories of the PC Engine / TurboGrafx, or any of the Maxis games? If so, we’d love to hear from you, so send a note over to [email protected], leave a comment on the post, or start a discussion in Goodpods.

If you liked this episode or any of our content, we’d greatly appreciate any little bit of support you can throw our way over at our Ko-Fi page.

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With such a diverse range of stories being told online through platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and more, it’s crucial that we look at the journey to make the ability to share those stories more accessible.

It was great to chat with Pam about how things have changed so much in filmmaking over the years and get her valuable insights into why art and storytelling are so important in our digital age.

Please do make sure you check out her podcast, and of course if you have experience with digital storytelling, we’d love to hear from you, so send a note over to [email protected], leave a comment on the post, or start a discussion in Goodpods.

If you liked this episode or any of our content, we’d greatly appreciate any little bit of support you can throw our way over at our Ko-Fi page.

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As I hope comes across in the episodes, great audio is something I really believe is essential for any content creator; there’s nothing worse than a great-looking YouTube video that has audio that sounds like it was recorded in the bathroom.

That’s where the new Vocaster range from Focusrite comes in, and so with the kind help of Arielle from SquadCast, I was able to arrange a chat with Dan to go a bit deeper into what Vocaster is and why it may be the right fit for podcasters, YouTubers, and many other storytellers.

I want to say a huge thanks to Dan for taking the time to chat, and for how open and honest he was when we talked about the competition. You can genuinely hear Dan’s passion for audio and Focusrite come through.

It’s worth mentioning that this isn’t a paid promotion episode, no money has changed hands and Focusrite haven’t asked for any editorial control of the episode. However, for full transparency during our chat Dan did very kindly arrange for a Vocaster One to be sent out to me at no cost, but this was not based on any conditions or content requirements.

What’s your experience been with audio interfaces and recording setups? We’d love to hear from you, so send a note over to [email protected], leave a comment on the post, or start a discussion in Goodpods. 

If you liked this episode or any of our content, we’d greatly appreciate any little bit of support you can throw our way over at our Ko-Fi page.

Intro and outro theme: Ace of Clubs by RoccoW

As many of our regular listeners will know, I’m a bit of a smart home addict and my platform of choice is Apple’s HomeKit. To dive a bit deeper into the platform I invited Stephen Robles from the HomeKit Insider podcast to come and chat about the good, the missing, and the frustrating parts of the HomeKit ecosystem in 2022.

What’s been your HomeKit experience so far, good or bad, we’d love to hear from you, so send a note over to [email protected], leave a comment on the post, or start a discussion in Goodpods.

If you liked this episode or any of our content, we’d greatly appreciate any little bit of support you can throw our way over at our Ko-Fi page.

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For someone who can’t (due to my eyesight) drive, I think it’s fair to say I’ve picked up fairly substantial interest in the future of electric vehicles, as they’re the foundation needed for fully self-driving cars that someone like me could own.

Alex kindly came back to the show, albeit in a different role, to discuss where we are in 2022 regarding electric cars. We take a look at who’s making vehicles right now, beyond the behemoth that is Tesla, as well as factors like charging accessibility, range concerns, affordability, and of course environmental impact.

I’ll admit this is very much a UK-centric episode; that’s simply because that’s the experience Alex and I have to share. That does, of course, mean that if anyone has experience with electric cars in other countries and regions we’d love to hear from you, so send a note over to [email protected], leave a comment on the post, or start a discussion in Goodpods.

If you liked this episode or any of our content, we’d greatly appreciate any little bit of support you can throw our way over at our Ko-Fi page.

Note from James (November 2022): This episode of Crossed Wires was the catalyst for Charging Status, so do make sure you check out those episodes where Alex and I talk more UK focussed EV news every month.

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Suppose you’ve watched any amount of online video, particularly on YouTube. In that case, you’ll likely have seen those ads for the ‘miracle’ tech products that claim to be able to do anything from cut your power bills to turning your internet up to 11. In reality, most of these are scams and don’t meet even half of the claims they make.

That’s why I invited Krazy Ken all the way from the secret Computer Clan lair to come and talk to us about his efforts to debunk these scams on his YouTube channel.

I’ve been a fan of Ken’s content for some time, particularly his scam busing series where he not only proves these scams don’t work but actually gets into why they can’t work. It was a genuine pleasure to have Ken on the show, I’m always really grateful when ‘larger’ creators are willing to come and chat on our fledgling show.

I really hope you enjoy this episode, I’d love to hear your stories of products that may not have lived up to their marketing, or if you’ve seen blatant tech scams online. This is exactly the sort of thing we want to help educate people on, to make being online and using tech safer for everyone.

Links are little light this episode, mostly because I don’t want to give any extra traffic to any of the scam products we mention!

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This is an episode I’m really excited to have been able to record, and I’d like to start by thanking Chris Angel for their willingness to come and talk to me so openly about the things they’ve learned as both a member of the LGBTQAI+ community and as someone who is studying UI and UX design.

Accessibility is a real passion of mine, as someone with a disability I’ve always been keen to make sure sites, apps, application forms etc are as accessible as possible. As our culture is changing, we need to make sure that that same level of accessibility is afforded to everyone, especially marginalised groups like the LGBTQIA community

I want to make it very clear that whilst we at Crossed Wires always appreciate comments and feedback on episodes, we will not tolerate any form of hate or abuse levelled at either myself, or any member of the Crossed Wires team, or our guests. Any comments we feel don’t meet that standard will be removed, and similarly, any abusive social media posts will be reported to the relevant platform.

With that out of the way, please do enjoy this episode. Let us know your experiences of accessibility, good or bad, either here or over on Goodpods.

If you liked this episode or any of our content, we’d greatly appreciate any little bit of support you can throw our way over at our Ko-Fi page.

Intro and outro theme: Ace of Clubs by RoccoW