Jason Snell

Jason recounts his personal history as a tech enthusiast and how he built a new life on the Web as an independent writer and podcaster. Along the way, he considers his identity, interaction with fan communities and development of various solo and collaborative projects. Podcast case study: 20 Macs for 2020 at Relay FM (https://www.relay.fm/20macs) (producer) Find Jason at sixcolors.com (https://sixcolors.com). Read a transcript of the episode as a styled PDF (https://martinfeld.files.wordpress.com/2023/08/8b37a-2023-03-really-specific-stories-transcript-e28094-jason-snell.pdf) or in plain text (https://assets.fireside.fm/file/fireside-images/podcasts/transcripts/c/c67dadf4-8798-4528-8e7d-e45b83c1d218/episodes/d/d6b5fa56-5380-4e75-ae54-a9a9e2ecf58d/transcript.txt). Links and Show Notes A Highly-focused Beam 00:00:00 Steve Jobs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs) iTunes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes) Apple announced support for podcasts in iTunes 4.9. Apple Takes Podcasting Mainstream (https://www.apple.com/au/newsroom/2005/06/28Apple-Takes-Podcasting-Mainstream/) (Apple Newsroom press release from 28 June 2005) Steve Jobs announces switch to Intel & Podcasting WWDC 2005 (https://youtu.be/iNwvAuc0nCU?t=406) (Steve Jobs Archive on YouTube, jumps straight to podcast announcement at 00:06:46) For those who enjoy digital spelunking, here’s the full history of iTunes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_iTunes). Macworld (https://www.macworld.com) Macworld Podcast (https://www.macworld.com/opinion/podcast) Mac (computer) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_(computer)) Apple Inc. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc.) iPod (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod) Hypercritical (https://hypercritical.fireside.fm/) (podcast) Build and Analyze (https://archive.org/details/podcast_build-analyze_404064215) was a weekly news and discussion show about technology by Marco Arment and Dan Benjamin, which can now be found in the Internet Archive. Marco Arment (https://marco.org/about) Dan Benjamin (https://danbenjamin.com/) Downstream (https://www.relay.fm/downstream) Julia Alexander (https://twitter.com/loudmouthjulia) Parrot Analytics (https://t.co/nme8a4mVYC) Tim Goodman (https://twitter.com/BastardMachine) Articles at The Hollywood Reporter (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/author/tim-goodman/) San Francisco Chronicle (https://www.sfchronicle.com) Twitter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter) The Incomparable (https://www.theincomparable.com) InterText (http://intertext.com/magazine/) Building an Audience 00:10:17 RSS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS) Ricky Gervais (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricky_Gervais) The Ricky Gervais Show (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ricky_Gervais_Show) tv.org (https://web.archive.org/web/20050915000000*/tv.org) (Snapshots are in the Internet Archive.) Usenet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet) FTP server (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTP_server) Offset printing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offset_printing) GarageBand (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GarageBand) Substack (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substack) Accessibility (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility) Byline (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byline) Leo Laporte (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Laporte) This Week in Tech (TWiT) (https://twit.tv) MacBreak Weekly (https://twit.tv/shows/macbreak-weekly) Relay FM (https://www.relay.fm) Myke Hurley (http://www.mykehurley.net) Stephen Hackett (https://512pixels.net/) John Siracusa (https://hypercritical.co) John’s archive of articles at Ars Technica (https://arstechnica.com/author/john-siracusa/) Community and Persona 00:22:05 Mastodon (social network) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(social_network)) New tool ‘Movetodon’ makes it easier to find your Twitter friends on Mastodon (https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/29/a-new-tool-movetodon-makes-it-easier-to-find-your-twitter-friends-on-mastodon/) (This is one example of the tools that were available to switch networks.) Upgrade (https://www.relay.fm/upgrade) MacUser (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacUser) The Rebound (https://reboundcast.com) Dan Moren (https://zeppelin.flights/@dmoren) Lex Friedman (https://hachyderm.io/@lexfri) John Moltz (https://mastodon.social/@Moltz) Honesty and Care 00:30:51 Anti-fan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-fan) Star Trek (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek) Star Wars (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars) Marvel Entertainment (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvel_Entertainment) Google Pixel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Pixel) Android (operating system) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(operating_system)) Harry McCracken (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_McCracken) Andy Ihnatko (https://twit.social/@ihnatko) E-reader (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-reader) AppleScript (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppleScript) A Massive Media Transition 00:44:09 20 Macs for 2020 (https://www.relay.fm/20macs) TikTok (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TikTok) YouTube (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube) Rene Ritchie (https://reneritchie.net) Jason’s @bleedsixcolors YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@bleedsixcolors) I Have Eight Jobs! 00:53:41 Jason mentions three of his membership programs for podcast fans: Six Colors (https://sixcolors.com/subscribe/); The Incomparable (https://www.theincomparable.com/members/); and Upgrade+ (https://www.relay.fm/membership) (displayed alongside other shows at Relay FM). Accidental Tech Podcast (ATP) (https://atp.fm) Airbnb (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube) David Sparks (https://www.macsparky.com) John Gruber (https://daringfireball.net/) Credits Recorded and edited by Martin Feld, using Audio Hijack (https://rogueamoeba.com/audiohijack/) and Ferrite Recording Studio (https://www.wooji-juice.com/products/ferrite/) Martin’s edit in Ferrite https://martinfeld.files.wordpress.com/2023/08/4bbf2-2023-03-really-specific-stories-jason-snell-ferrite-timeline-screenshot.jpeg As an insight into community influence and my own fandom, I use Ferrite Recording Studio with iPad Pro and Apple Pencil because of Jason's early reviews of the app (such as this one (https://sixcolors.com/post/2015/11/editing-podcasts-on-ios-with-ferrite/)) and his comprehensive demo video on YouTube (https://sixcolors.com/post/2020/02/video-editing-podcasts-with-ferrite-and-apple-pencil/). Just to emphasise the 'iPadness' of this academic/community audio project, you may notice that I left the iPadOS pointer visible in the screenshot above, which Jason also wrote about optimistically back in 2020 (https://sixcolors.com/post/2020/03/the-ipad-cursor-is-here-no-wait-required/). Original podcast theme music by Alex Canion (https://www.alexcanion.com) Contact Website: rsspod.net (https://www.rsspod.net) Email: martin@loungeruminator.net (mailto:martin@loungeruminator.net) Mastodon: social.lol/@martinfeld (https://social.lol/@martinfeld) Micro.blog: micro.blog/martinfeld (https://micro.blog/martinfeld) A Special Note Martin is a paying subscriber of Jason’s Six Colors and Upgrade+ membership programs; this did not influence any of the questions that were asked and did not place any expectations on Jason as a participant of this academic podcasting project.