Space Javelin

Gaming on the go, Fallout 76 snubs Steam, and Master Chief is returning to the small screen.

Show notes: http://hammergaming.com/hammercast/48/

A record quarter, a new stock market high, and a historical milestone for Apple and the US -- and that's just for starters, cadets! Mike and Charles dig into the interesting bits of Apple's just-renewed license to print money, make fun of the pundits for being predictably wrong once again, shrug at the Samsung Galaxy S9 and S4 Tab, and ponder once again what is going on with Intel.

Also covered is the Newton's 25th anniversary (what?!), Huawei's great quarter, CVS surrendering to Apple Pay, the not-so-strange drop in Mac sales, the Apple Watch as sales hero and literal life-saver, Chase's cardless ATMs (that also use Apple Pay), squee over the forthcoming Time Bandits Apple television series, and put out the call to help the Red Cross fight California's raging wildfires. All this and co-captain Mike mansplained stuff to The New Screen Savers, cadets, so move away from the starboard side -- we're going hard LaPorte!

Steam tries to be Discord, Nintendo sells 20 million Switches, Google's making a console, and Logitech is seeing Blue.

Show notes: http://hammergaming.com/hammercast/47/

While co-captain Charles is away, Mike and special guest William Gallagher … nerd out pretty hardcore on Star Wars past, present, and future, cadets (yes, possible spoilers about Episode IX based on publicly-available casting information). Before all that, though, there’s still more coverage of the new MacBook Pros, hints of future Apple directions, guides to how to to choose the best tools for working with text and making presentations, and much more. Regular service resumes next week, cadets, assuming the cleaning bots can clear up the mess left behind … paging the Admiral of the Latrines …

No Man's Sky rockets to relevance. A Destiny 2 news roundup. eGPUs ad you. Iron Edda Accelerated hits Kickstarter. Are updates the new releases?

Most of you cadets will be listening to this on Charles' birthday, and this year Mike's present is ... next episode off, and 100K listens! This time, though, Mike and Charles welcome a new class of Space Javelin academy grads who have arrived by way of TWiT.tv's The New Screen Savers, really get into the weeds about the good, the bad, and the ugly on the 2018 MacBook Pros.

Google gets a $5B fine, Android loses ground in the US to iPhone, Roku tells the truth (you're not gonna like it, though), India gives Apple's privacy policies a hard time, HomeKit doorbells appear to be vaporware, Comcast surrenders to Disney, Verizon is shutting down its non-VOLTE networks and shutting out old smartphones, and a Republican in Congress has actually stood up for -- that's FOR -- net neutrality.

Oh we're not done yet! We've got some good Deals of the Week, some replacements for Apple's in-Photos printing services, the perils of buying a fake iPhone X, a look at the Ecovacs Ozmo and Mophie Lightning-based battery packs, true tales of iPhone survival, and more. Welcome aboard, veteran and new cadets alike -- and get ready for a pretty wild shakedown cruise!

Multi-Function Displays and Second-Screen Gaming. A New VR connection standard. No Man’s Sky finally gets multiplayer. And Joe’s back!

Show notes on http://hammergaming.com/hammercast/45/

What th--! Someone must have turned off the gravitron, cadets, because the tech universe is pretty topsy-turvy this week, and we're not sure the navi-bot knows which way is up anymore! Mike and Charles start off with a story of industrial espionage before they get to the surprise announcements of new MacBook Pros, the 15-inch model of which can now handle up to 32GB of RAM! They go over the new features and a new official eGPU accessory, take a peek under the keys, and talk touchbars and True Tone, among other news.

There's also plenty of good news about Mac sales, Adobe and the iPad, and AirPlay 2 and Sonos -- unless you're Samsung, where a recent study about smartphone failure rates and projected S9 sales might cause you to go into retrograde. AT&T is also in the news for all the wrong reasons (again!), security news, Apple's AR and car software gets a new chief, a lengthy engineering report, and a bunch of the more normal shenanigans and technobabble you've come to expect. All this and sudden cache for iPhone owners -- so put on your formal spacesuits, cadets, we're apparently rich now!

Monster Hunter PC is a month away, Fortnite’s Season 5 reveal gets real, and charitable Destiny players put ink on butts.

Show notes: http://hammergaming.com/hammercast/44/

Co-captain Mike is out for the week, planes are taking off in the harbor next to Charles' studio, and Admiral William Gallagher has come on board to help comment on the tech week that was. The App Store turns 10 years old (what?!), the iPhone 8 dethrones the iPhone X for number one smartphone (so they say), some new Macs and iPads are on the way, and HTC is feeling the pain while Samsung gets mugged by Wall Street analysts over the S9 family's lackluster numbers, and that's just the beginning.

Also on tap this week is a look at the longevity of the iPad Pro (from both Malcolm's and William's experiences), more price hikes for internet services now that net neutrality is gone, a warning about low-end Android phones, and a visit to the Fail Pail starring Google and Samsung. On the plus side, there's lots of good news for or about Apple: Nintendo rakes in cash from iOS gamers, Apple's claims of "studio quality" portraits are vindicated, HP partners with Apple for enterprise, and Apple Music topped Spotify in paid subscribers in the US for the first time.

Charles and William also go over some of the best deals we've seen happening before (or on) Amazon Prime Day this 16-July, including Mac hardware deals from AppleInsider, a great new feature coming in iOS 12, and a pro tip for any cadets that might ever need to address Congress, the UN, the UK Parliament or any other large group: turn off "hey Siri" on your phone before you do. All this and more, so grab your geiger counters, cadets, it's positively positronic this week!