DaveMason.com
ComputerTalk with Dave Mason
The official archive of all available ComputerTalk with Dave Mason radio shows. Spend some time with Dave. Listen to a full show or explore clips by topic.
3,475 unique clips. Each clip appears in one section. Historical conversations, not current advice. Full episodes remain available separately by date.
562 clips, strongest first.
Dr. Dave challenges the common memory that the Diamond Rio or iPod came first, naming the MPMan as the first portable player and recounting Compaq engineers’ early hard-drive design before Apple transformed the market.
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Dr. Dave compares the first full December sales of Nintendo’s Wii, Sony’s PlayStation 3 and Microsoft’s older Xbox 360. He sees the Wii’s early lead over Sony as confirmation that available games and a complete ecosystem can matter more than theoretical console performance.
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Dr. Dave tracks the ambitious early WiMAX rollout, mixed Baltimore experience and recession-era financial constraints, then openly says nobody knows the 2009 economic future and advises planning for the best while preparing for the worst.
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Dr. Dave says Microsoft's Windows 10 plan finally brings focus to the confused ambition of Windows 8: one connected experience whose interface still makes sense on a PC, phone or tablet. Device-specific controls, shared notifications and an intelligent interface switcher leave him almost excited about Microsoft for the first time in years.
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After running the Windows 7 beta for several weeks, Dr. Dave sees a chance for Microsoft to rebuild confidence and argues that making the path from XP smooth matters more than forcing customers through Vista.
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In a deliberately overproduced new Windows 7 feature segment, Dr. Dave introduces Problem Steps Recorder and immediately recognizes its value: users can capture a problem screen by screen and send a reproducible account to support.
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Looking ahead to Xbox 360, the brothers ask whether Microsoft needed to profit from each console at all. They speculate that subscriptions, services and game licensing could turn the hardware into an entry point for recurring revenue, much like a subsidized phone.
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Dr. Dave remembers an early web entrepreneur predicting that CBS would disappear within two years and concludes that the prediction saw the direction correctly but missed the timing. He connects the slower transformation to streaming, cable choice, satellite and digital radio, welcomes the opportunity rather than fearing it and then considers CBS putting college basketball online as a mass market Internet moment.
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Guest Bill Moore argues that radio is defined by its people and programs, not the way it reaches listeners. Dr. Dave agrees: the opportunity is to make shows people want and let them listen on any device.
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Danny explains why built-in accessibility in Mac OS X Tiger could matter to blind computer users, and Dr. Dave compares it with the expense and instability of contemporary PC screen readers.
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Dr. Dave and Evil Steve react with disbelief to Lenovo's slide-out secondary display and consider the machine as a mobile workstation for photographers and designers. Its unusual form makes it historical design material rather than an ordinary sale item.
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Just after the inauguration, Dr. Dave and Evil Steve examine reports that President Obama wanted to retain mobile email and explain why government security requirements could point to a specialized device rather than an ordinary BlackBerry.
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After Alan Kotok’s death, Dr. Dave and Evil Steve remember his place among the early MIT computer hackers and his contribution to Spacewar on the PDP 1. They marvel that an interactive video game existed in 1962 and keep the history lively with improvised Cold War and age jokes.
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A developer preview gives Dr. Dave unusual optimism about Microsoft. He praises apparent efficiency while repeatedly warning that it is a very early build and could still fail, leaving a valuable record of expectations before Windows 7 shipped.
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Dr. Dave and Evil Steve joke that talking on a smartphone is becoming obsolete, then Dr. Dave predicts that an Apple tablet would not be different enough to succeed. The incorrect prediction is especially revealing historical context.
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When observers complain that Google announced Android instead of a branded phone, Dr. Dave argues that they are missing the larger move. He sees an operating system, developer kit and handset alliance laying the foundation for a family of mobile services and predicts that Google's true ambition is a vast advertising network carried through wireless devices.
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Dr. Dave and Evil Steve unpack the unusual performance-capture process behind the newly released Beowulf. They distinguish an actor supplying only a voice from a digital character that retains the performer's eyes and mouth, then wonder whether the technique could let actors stay young forever and joke that it might even make Dr. Dave look like Angelina Jolie.
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Dr. Dave explains perpendicular hard drive recording by comparing magnetic bits to the figures in a commercial who stand upright instead of lying flat. The vivid analogy introduces a major storage transition and the possibility of much denser notebook drives.
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Dr. Dave declares the Blu-ray versus HD DVD format war effectively over and compares an HD DVD buyer to a Betamax owner. Then the brothers imagine Green Ray, Orange Ray and Red Ray making Blu-ray obsolete in turn, summing up an industry that regularly asks customers to replace what they already bought.
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The hosts joke about an experimental nose-controlled cursor, then recognize its genuine potential for people who cannot use a conventional mouse.
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Early skepticism about online grocery delivery and choosing fresh produce offers historical perspective on an industry, rather than a product recommendation.
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Dr. Dave and Evil Steve react to an early NTT prototype said to transmit data through the body’s natural electric field. Business cards by handshake, music through clothing and photographs transferred by touch lead to jokes about accidental connections, lotion and rebooting the brain.
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Evil Steve asks Dr. Dave to leave a prediction they can revisit in the archive a year later. After joking about music at gas pumps, Dr. Dave expects incremental rather than revolutionary progress, including dual core processors, falling display prices, miniaturization, better value, laptops outselling desktops and Computer Talk becoming more widespread than ever.
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Dr. Dave revisits a striking demonstration that acoustic vibration from shouting can measurably affect hard-drive performance, a compact mix of engineering curiosity and radio humor.
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Browse by year, then month, to find the episodes from that month.
442 proposed broadcast dates, plus 2 undated entries. Dates are based on archive filenames and may be approximate. Some broadcasts survive as separate parts or incomplete recordings.
