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.
ON AIR
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.
Technology History
562 clips, strongest first.
The iPhone announcement meets the real world · Proposed air date:
Dr. Dave introduces Apple’s newly announced iPhone with genuine admiration for its thin body, touchscreen, sensors and integration, then subjects the presentation to a consultant’s questions. Service cost, replacement, durability, Windows compatibility and responsiveness remain unknown until ordinary users can hold the device, yet he recognizes that successful execution could move the whole phone market forward.
The iPhone price cut and iPod Touch arrival · Proposed air date:
Only months after the first iPhone launch, Dr. Dave reports a two-hundred-dollar price cut, mocks the early line-sitters and reacts to Steve Jobs' store-credit response. The same update captures the just-announced iPod Touch before review units appeared, preserving the moment Apple separated the new touch interface from the phone.
Dr. Dave and Evil Steve treat Palm's CES announcement as a credible challenge to the iPhone, work through the Pre's webOS design and multitasking and consider whether an important mobile pioneer can return to relevance.
The QR code before it was familiar · Proposed air date:
Dr. Dave introduces American listeners to a two-dimensional code already used with camera phones elsewhere, explains how it can open a web address and lets Evil Steve turn the unfamiliar pattern into a mind-control joke.
The six-hundred-dollar email client · Proposed air date:
A positive review calling the HP TouchPad an excellent email platform prompts Dr. Dave and Evil Steve to imagine what a six-hundred-dollar email client would have to do, preserving a sharp first-week reaction to a major 2011 tablet launch.
The video iPod four days before it arrived · Proposed air date:
Four days before Apple announced the fifth generation iPod with video, Dr. Dave and Evil Steve openly doubt that a video iPod is imminent and wrestle with content distribution, storage cost and the usefulness of watching a small screen. Their imagined magnifying glasses and wearable display make the clip a revealing snapshot of how uncertain a now familiar product category still seemed.
The Wii found an unexpected audience · Proposed air date:
Dr. Dave and Evil Steve explain how the Wii's motion controller brought physical movement into games and attracted older people who were not the expected console audience. They recognize that even modest movement can matter and marvel at Nintendo appearing in nursing homes.
The X-51A and the pace of invention · Proposed air date:
The X-51A WaveRider test renews the brothers’ excitement about aerospace progress and leads them to compare it with the enormous change in flight between 1945 and 1970.
Theoretical Internet vulnerabilities became real · Proposed air date:
Dr. Dave and Evil Steve remember warning about firewalls and network attacks in 1997 and 1998 when listeners thought the risks sounded paranoid. Dr. Dave says the vulnerabilities were once theoretical because they had not yet been exploited, then adds that eventually they were and the rest became history.
Dr. Dave introduces Apple’s OS X 10.4 Tiger release as the biggest operating-system event in years, describing stores closing to prepare and customers lining up hours early. Evil Steve turns every repetition of the product name into a recurring sound-effect joke.
Vista and the New Coke question · Proposed air date:
Dr. Dave says he tries to avoid fearmongering and fashionable Microsoft hatred, but that honesty requires him to call Vista not ready for prime time. He compares Microsoft's predicament with Coca-Cola abandoning New Coke and wonders whether the software company could ever retreat to an XP Classic.
Vista public beta and the customer review program · Proposed air date:
Microsoft opens the Windows Vista beta to the public and describes it as a customer review program, prompting Dr. Dave and Evil Steve to joke about customers testing the operating system for the company. Dr. Dave warns listeners not to install a beta on a computer they need and gives a skeptical first reaction to the features that remained before launch.
Voyager reaches for interstellar space · Proposed air date:
Dr. Dave and Evil Steve marvel at Voyager 1 traveling roughly twice Pluto’s distance and approaching the region where the solar wind slows near interstellar space. Evil Steve translates the scale into a vivid thought: the spacecraft may be encountering particles that did not come from our Sun.
Waiting in line for the iPhone 4 · Proposed air date:
On announcement week, Dr. Dave explains the iPhone 4’s launch plan, admires Apple’s command of demand and jokes that every warning about lines requires devoted buyers to arrive another day earlier.
Web 2.0 in the hype free zone · Proposed air date:
Dr. Dave and Evil Steve laugh at technology buzzwords that people pretend to understand, then explain what Web 2.0 and Ajax meant in 2006. Their examples of browser based services working more like local applications preserve a recognizable turning point in the everyday web without losing the show’s hype free tone.
When a computer delayed the opera · Proposed air date:
The Los Angeles Opera’s premiere of Grendel is postponed because four computers cannot reliably control the motors moving a thirty foot rotating wall central to the production. Dr. Dave and Evil Steve relish the collision between high technology and traditional theater, where a set too heavy to operate manually makes the computer problem impossible to bypass.
When a computer worm became a weapon · Proposed air date:
Dr. Dave introduces Stuxnet as a turning point in computer security, explaining why software that could cross disconnected machines and affect industrial equipment changed the meaning of a computer virus.
When AOL dial-up still had millions · Proposed air date:
Dr. Dave marvels that AOL reportedly still had 2.1 million dial-up subscribers in 2015 and works through what modern pages and constant software updates would feel like at modem speed. His punch line is philosophical: perhaps seeing less of the Internet means wasting less of one's life on it.
When iTunes outgrew the CD logo · Proposed air date:
The new iTunes 10 logo drops the compact disc as Dr. Dave describes digital track sales overtaking American CD sales; Evil Steve answers the new Ping network with an extended “ping pongs” riff.
When the stereo receiver became a computer · Proposed air date:
Dr. Dave notices technology categories collapsing into one another: multifunction printers now outperform many old stand-alone scanners, while a client's stereo receiver takes fifteen seconds to turn on because it is really a Linux computer booting. The delay that sounds like vacuum tubes is software.
When video games began to rival movies · Proposed air date:
Halo 2’s first-day sales lead Dr. Dave and Evil Steve to recognize video games as a major cultural medium comparable to film, while still joking about people waiting outside for the release.
Windows 3 reaches the end of support · Proposed air date:
Dr. Dave marks Microsoft ending support for Windows 3.x, remembers its light resource needs and embedded afterlife and explains how Windows for Workgroups changed local networking. The brothers contrast its age with how much computing had and had not changed.
Windows 7 is Vista, only better · Proposed air date:
Dr. Dave quotes Steve Ballmer's early public description of Windows 7 and the brothers answer with skeptical humor shaped by the delayed Longhorn and difficult Vista eras.
Dr. Dave and Evil Steve react to the announcement that Microsoft’s Longhorn project will be called Windows Vista. Dr. Dave mentions virtual folders and improved searching, then both riff on alternative names before the show turns to cell phone advertising.
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.
