Space Javelin

This was a great week to be Apple, or an Apple-centric news site, cadets. From the new iPhones and Apple Watch (with the latter's surprise ECG ability) to the fact that Apple is about to pass the two billion iOS devices sold milestone and just won a freakin' Emmy, the medi-bay is full of cadets diagnosed with a severe case of device desire ... and the only cure is to give Apple all your credits!

Co-captains Mike and Charles go over both the details of the new iPhones as well as unearthing a goldmine (which Mike will need to pay for his new iPhone Xs Max) of under-reported or quietly-announced items that didn't get much, if any, time at the presentation -- such as which "old" models got the heave-ho (or were missing in action, *cough* AirPower *cough*). There was other tech news, mind you, like Waze testing a new version of its app for CarPlay, some Mac news, and updates on the Sprint-TMobile proposed merger, Adobe's latest Creative Cloud, and more trouble for Qualcomm -- but to tell the truth the really fun part is taking stock of who was wrong in their predictions on the event, including ourselves. All this and a new way to pay for your Big Bite hot dog, cadets, so open your mouth -- and your wallet -- wide, because the countdown to Space Festivus starts ... NOW!

MMO aquisitions and shutdowns. Tabletop RPG releases and playtests. National Video Game Day... maybe?

Show notes: http://hammergaming.com/hammercast/52/

After over 100 episodes named after fury rained down from orbit, this week our special guest star is the weather, hurling thunderbolts and lightning (very very frightening) at Mike as if Zeus himself was trying to supplement our meager sound effects budget. Meanwhile, Mike and Charles focus on another officer of the ship who played a huge role in events this week: Major FAIL! If you were a company or government planning to seriously drop the ball, this was the week to do it -- from Qualcomm's bungled legal strategy, to British Airways handing out your credit card info; from Mspy losing a notebook full of login credentials, to Mac apps collecting data they shouldn't; the good news in the tech world is pretty thin on the ground this time around.

Mike and Charles make the best of Virginia's angry volcano god by taking a few moments to include Space Javelin's first-ever weather report, and share some mutual memories of Florida (where both used to live) and its notorious storms while the rumblings of our hangry deity make themselves known from time to time. Other topics covered include Apple's new law-enforcement portal and its clearance to buy Shazam, Google's forthcoming reveal of the heavily-leaked Pixel 3, a couple of good deals that are winding down, celebrities caught selling out to Android on their iPhone, a short Engineering Report, we max out our XS pushback, and the tale of a cosmic wrong that has been righted. Is it mere coincidence that the storm abated once we got to that story? You be the judge, cadets, on the latest super-charged surround-sound episode of ... SPACE JAVELIN!

PAX West Recap, Generation Zero Accused of Art Plagiarism, and Destiny 2 Forsaken Impressions.

Show notes: http://hammergaming.com/hammercast/51/

Any week that winds up with another all-time record high for AAPL and an invite to their latest house party in the mail is a good week aboard the good ship Space Javelin, cadets, but there's still plenty of other news to talk about as well. In addition to the latest speculation about what September 12th will bring forth from the mothership and other general good news for Apple lovers, there's a new repair program for owners of some vintage Macs, surprising sales of the Series 1 Apple Watch, new mobile chips from Intel, new App Store privacy requirements, and sweet news about iCloud, CarPlay, and yes even Android Auto.

Square finally gets on board the Lightning bus, a rumor about the last AirPort Express getting AirPlay 2 comes true, and the last of the Celebgate hackers goes to jail. Let's not forget though, that into every stunning supernova a few asteroids must fall, so Mike and Charles also take on some of the less-happy items in the news engine: Russian law forces Apple to forbid its Pride watch face, Bang & Olufsen lose their minds, and Warren Buffet says Apple shouldn't enter the car business. To help make up for that, we've got a deep dive into our backlog of cool new gear to review and recommend -- and the crew celebrates an extra thousand listens this past week, so everything's coming up space roses for us. Strap in, cadets, and prepare the heat shield for an info-dump of epic proportions!

Cyberpunk 2077 looks legit. Warcraft perverts the gear treadmill. In Nomine is getting republished. Featuring Tabletop Gaming correspondent Jeremy Morgan.

Show notes: http://hammergaming.com/hammercast/50/

It may be the end times, cadets -- at least that's the impression you'd get if you took a look at planet Earth these days: some places are on fire, others full of water, and that's before you get to the weekly disasters, fubars, and general fails we call the tech world. Verizon bungles an emergency call, Facebook loses face over a fake VPN, Android and Google get caught lying about their privacy parties, Huawei and Samsung get caught cheating over photos (again), and -- worse of all -- pundits predict doooom because of the iPhone X: it's just ... too ... popular!

And that's just us warming up, friends -- a third-party Mac email client let in malware, a battery raised some alarms in an Apple Store in Holland, Mojave has stripped out Back to My Mac, a 3D printer started a rumour about the next iPad Pros, and some guy punched a lady salesperson right in the Face ID. To be fair, there was some good news -- Nikon has some new mirrorless models, Verizon apologized and lifted its data caps on first responders, Costco is now rolling out Apple Pay, and Microsoft Office 2019 is on the way.

Walmart is launching an ebook shop! Civilization VI on iPad is totally awesome! There's new iDevices and maybe even new Macs on the way! Someone has figured out why people switch mobile platforms, and of course there's at least one crazy pundit that says something ridiculous so Mike and Charles can rake them over the dilithium crystals. All this and more, cadets, so strap in and prepare for the incredibly real sensations of a real disaster ... because it's a real disaster!

Description: Nvidia's RTX 20 Series GPUs bring realtime ray-tracing to games, Discord returns Steam's compliments by selling games, and Amazon & Netflix ruin the glorious cord-cutting future.

Show notes: http://hammergaming.com/hammercast/49/

Our 100th regular Space Javelin episode kinda snuck up on us while we were repairing the quantum drive, cadets, so there's nothing but VR carrot cake to celebrate -- however, co-captains Mike and Charles do spend a little time reminiscing on the iMac for its 20th anniversary, alongside the latest tech news and oddities. Apple gets hacked (sorta), the US bans ZTE and Huawei again (sorta), and Intel deals with another chip flaw (sorta).

That's not all, of course: Turkey and Australia go bonkers, Twitter and Google go rogue, the latest rumors get score-carded, Nvidia's new graphics cards get previewed, a new OWC Thunderbolt thingy gets reviewed, and the ship drops by a Mac-Donald's in Chicago (and yes, it's big). All this and more, cadets, so take off your air supply helmets and put on your party hats, it's time to celebrate the tech odyssey that is ... SPACE JAVELIN!

It's the one before our big 100th Space Javelin episode, cadets, and the command deck is all abuzz with a supply shuttle's worth of new gear to play with! The Galaxy Note 9 and the Google Pixel 3 Plus both lose out to the nearly year-old iPhone X, Samsung puts out a smart speaker, Magic Leap stumbles, the Dell XPS 15 and Huawei Matebook challenge the 2018 MacBook Pro, and we have a double-length Engineering Report segment as well! But wait, there's more!

Not all the news was centered around hardware this week -- TSMC got hit with a virus, Apple got hit with a court date in India, Google ruined co-captain Charles' day by going with "Pie" instead of "Pez" (yawn!), Qualcomm plays a $800 million "Get Out of Jail Free" card, Consumer Reports likes Apple Pay Cash, Verizon extends users' Apple Music trial, Apple gains more support for its Health Records initiative, more audio makers get on board with AirPlay 2, Movies Anywhere gains Microsoft, and NC teachers are getting new iPads. All this, and we're not done yet!

Mike and Charles dicker over the "best Mac ever made," Palm is being resurrected from the dead, a passel of AppleInsider articles get some praise, while a raft of new eGPUs get the once over. Also inspected are the Lenovo Smart Display, the Elevation dark Qi charger, the Sonnet Echo 11 TB3 dock, and more! We're pushing the warp engines to their limit, cadets, and this episode may contain more than the human brain can safely hold! Standby for supercompressed knowledge, and try not to lose ... your mind!