2023's Worst Gear: CultCast Review

Okay, let's run through worst of the year

And why don't we just go in reverse order, Griffin? What's just something that you just really

you really just hated this year, just really got your blood boiling. So this is the opposite of one of my picks earlier this year that we did on

I think on under review. I talked about the Cooks UX40, like all in one travel charger

And so they, like, my one complaint about it. I mean, I don't buy the things that people send me to review, obviously

But, you know, I was looking at the price and I was like, man, I really like this product. But I don't know if I would pay like $180 for it or something like that

Not $180, just like regular $80. You know, it's kind of expensive. So I was really excited when they came out with the Cooks UX-55, which is a slightly cheaper model

And I thought, hey, you know, send me one of those. I'll take a look at it

I was hoping, well, you know, this is probably just, you know, the same thing

I've made out of like plastic instead of metal, you know, to bring the price down an extra 20 or 30 bucks

No, it's absolute garbage. I don't know what they've done to this thing. But like, first of all, it's like three times, it's like three times as thick as the other one

It's like creaky. It doesn't like sometimes when you're adjusting like the different levels, like it's one of these chargers that unfolds

Like you can literally hear the plastic like creaking as you're undoing it or wiggling it around

the Apple Watch Charter that's built into it is like just garbage it's like you know just sort of

flips off like no good action on that it's it's terrible I don't really like it I think this is

kind of a kind of crap a regression in every sense yeah yeah oh and here's the dumbest thing

the the the cable that comes out of it comes out the side not the back yeah which is just

what what are you thinking for maximum annoyance yeah yeah they've been

built the entire product just to annoy a Griffin and it succeeded. You can't fold it up right

Like it's still, you fold it down and then it still has like this wiggle on it. It has a weird spring tension built into it or something

Yeah, yeah. It's the hinges aren't like a single action hinge. Like there's there's like a separate hinge piece between each layer of it

So it has this bizarre folding mechanism. Like it's possible to fold it where you can't actually put your phone on the magsafe thing

Because if you unfold it such that, like the hinge is going behind the bottom layer

then you can't attach your phone to it because the hinge is in the way. It's a stupid piece of design

We need to do, we need to do segments like this more often when we talk about the products that we don't like

I tend to shy away from doing that because I'm like, I don't want to roast the company

because sometimes the company just has a miss, right? They'll have like a whole line of great products

and then they'll have one that's not good. And when you roast it, it damages

it could damage the reputation, but sometimes the products deserve it. You know what I mean

they're just so bad. It's like, what were you thinking releasing this product

Maybe you weren't thinking. I'm going to help you think more clearly next time. It's kind of a fun thing

All right Lewis we going to reverse I got it in reverse I punched it What do you have I would say the worst thing that I dealt with this year is

and we were talking about this for the show, predictive text in iOS 17

Utter garbage, been garbage for years worse than ever now. Can't get the punctuation correct

Can't get common names. Like if I say Lewis, what might possibly be the next word that I would say

Typically it might be Wallace. Never on the auto complete. For some reason, it started putting the word darts in parentheses every time I say it

I even, I just tell you, I even went in and pressed delete the existing vocabulary

and it still put the word darts in parentheses. I put in, I try to say SEO, you know, SEO optimization

What does it say? S-C-O optimization. Why? Why? Is that a word

Why does it say that? Why does it say it over and over when I say SEO? I could rant all day about this

I think it's, you know, hands down, the worst thing about my iPhone

And if Apple can't fix that, I don't know. The fact that it just keeps getting worse is shocking to me

And I can't believe that the person who runs that department at Apple

I'd love them to call me personally because I'd like to hear an explanation. And it's been terrible for such a long time

They just can't seem to fix it. It's pathetic. And, you know, don't get me started on the other stuff

you know, we were also discussing with the show, right? Like, now, Siri is so much smarter

building to everything, and, you know, you got the little universal search. You start typing in the name of your app

which, frankly, I mean, it's a great feature that I use. Like, you type in the first two letters

and it pops up the app you're looking for. But, as we're saying

so many times these days, you're getting ready to tap the app you want

that it correctly identified, and it moves a different app in there

Split second. And you, yeah, always the splits. It's like it's got a proximity sensor

It knows, ah, the finger's going to be there in 0.2 seconds. Quick. Put the different app icon in there so they open the wrong app

I mean, those things are not helpful. And if Apple really thinks they're, you know, winning the AI game by making this stuff smarter, they are not

It is annoying and it makes my iPhone harder to use rather than easier

There's definitely a lot of room for improvement. Much, much, much, much, room

I want to give a quick shout out to Adrian Rods. I'm going to try and see this

Roudaskel. Rodoskel. Love the show, guys. Been a loyal listener since episode four, Lewis

With the five pounds. Thank you for the five quid there, Adrian

Episode four. That is, I mean, you're an honorary member of the Gov Club

You haven't been here since episode one, but you only miss three. And the first three probably weren't that great

In fact, I'd say maybe the first 300 maybe. But that means he's been listening to the show for, I don't know how long we've been here

A real long time. 13 years 13 years My oh my Yeah Thank you for that five quid And more than that thank you for just letting us know That pretty cool I always love hearing from the members of the Gov Club because I don know how many we have

but I do know that there's people out there who've been listening for the entire history of the show

which is wild to think that we've been doing it for this long. So thanks for letting us know

Was there anything else on that, Lewis, that... Oh, you'll be a more? Actually, no

I retract that question. Oh, man, I could do, like you guys, my list of things that annoyed me terribly is long and deep

There's so many things I could pick from. But the thing that I actually didn't even think about until this very moment comes from level remix from the chat

AirFon is home pods on the list this year. And I would say after being with the Gen 2 home pods for how long have they been out now

eight months, I would probably say, I think so. Now, I will immediately temper that comment by saying the HomePod 2s are not terrible

but they're not special. And that's the part that really is tragic

Apple took a really magnificent product, the HomePod, which has, had this epervescent, sparkling, beautiful golden audio

My two beautiful angels. And instead of improving on them and making them easy to fix after they bricked themselves

they took out two of the speakers and they just made them more generic

They sound like good speakers now and not like transcendent speakers anymore

And I think that's terribly sad. And I get why Apple did it. They're probably trying to create some cost savings and still keep the speakers on the market

But they just don't sound nearly as good as the original home pods do

They have lost that in magic. And I don't even know how they did that because they still sound good

But I don't think the Dolby Atmos sounds as good. I don't think the music reproduction sounds as good

And yeah, they're cheaper. But what you lost, is worth more than the money that you get discounted on those products

Like for now I would, I would legitimately consider going with a different solution

Like from Sonos or something, especially considering that Sonos is going to be creating their own

streaming set-top box to compete with Apple TV Plus and their speakers will work with it

I mean, the unbeatable feature with the HomePod still now is the fact that you can connect them to your Apple TV

and use them. as your TV speakers, that's not something that you can do with any of the speakers

And that's pretty valuable in my opinion because you could use them for music, but then you can also use them as your sound bar essentially

And they sound terrific, but they don't sound magical. And that is sad

I really hate what they did with the home pods I also hate that they didn make the home pod originals repairable And a lot of people are having problems with them including me

And I've never had a piece of technology that I can recall, be perfectly usable

And then all of a sudden just brick itself. Like, I don't think that's ever happened to me

And the fact that Apple isn't able to fix that is so frustrating and so baffling

It's like, how did you not create a way to log into this product without using Wi-Fi

If the Wi-Fi goes, stops working as happens with devices, you can't plug it in and actually like work on it

How is that even possible? So it's like they designed it. There's such a huge design flaw built in

That's the other disappointment. There's other Apple products I've been disappointed with this year

that I will probably save for next episode. But yeah, I think that that's

fair to say is like what a disappointment man i just i don't even recommend the home pods to people

anymore i still think that they're good products but there are other good products out there that

i think are worth trying especially from sonos the sonos era 100 or the 300s i would be really

interested in using and the 300s i think you can use as speakers for your tv although i don't think

it's a seamless as they should have made me product manager for the home pods man there's so many

things that they could have done. We talked about them on this show. HomePod subwifer

HomePod satellite mode so you could buy two more home pods, put them behind you and have

true surround sound and not just emulated surround sound. And that would have given them more value

in the marketplace so that you could justify the price point and still had that beautiful

pristine audio. I mean, there's so many things they could have done. And instead, they just

pulled them back and made them worse and then lowered the price. and that sucks

I still haven't heard the second-gen version. Well, don't go buy them

Yeah, well, I'm not going to. I mean, I already have two that haven't yet committed suicide

Yeah, RIP to the Home Pod. Maybe that's taking it too far

They're not bad. They're just not great. They were the best. They were the best

And now it's just another smart speaker that sounds good. I still think they sound better

than the Amazon Echo Studio. But in the pantheon of quote unquote high-end

smart speakers, they were the best. Nothing came close, man. Nothing came close

And now they're close. And they may even exceed it. Okay, I think that's it

Any famous last words before we move on? Yeah, you should try a rolling guitar amp

Two of those next to my TV. but but even together they're still just blasting mono

there's no stereo there it's just one monoblast all my plants will be dead

my hair will be slicked back long luscious beautiful I'm going to give it a shot

I just have to go visit Al and see if Al can hook me up with any more speakers