67 – Tech that Changed our Lives and Tech that Disappointed

Nintendo Switch, the Nokia 7110… what are the tech devices and gadgets that changed your life? How about you biggest disappointments?
In this episode of Tech Deciphered, we will share ours. We look forward to hearing yours. Share on LinkedIn or via email or X

Navigation:

1. Intro (01:34)
2. Tech That Changed Our Lives
3. Our Worst Tech Purchases
4. Reflection & Takeaways
5. Conclusion

Our co-hosts:

• Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt
• Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro

Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news

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Bertrand Schmitt
Welcome to Tech Deciphered, episode 67. This will be a lighter episode as summer is upon us. We will discuss and talk about tech that changed our lives, as well as tech that disappointed.

Some of you might know, some of you might not know, but both me and Nuno are tech nerds. We have played with tech most of our lives, always looking for the next available new piece of technology to use or collect. We are going to talk about that and maybe start on the positive side. The tech that changed our lives.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro
I’m sure everyone has their stories. Even if you’re not a nerd, there’s going to be that piece of equipment, that mobile phone, that gaming console, that whatever, that dramatically changed you, made you more productive, or allowed you to do something that you’d never done before, et cetera.

It’s always an interesting conversation to have, and it creates a lot of wonderful memories. It brings you back to places, it brings you back to that moment where you bought the device, that first time that you used it, the experiences you had, some of them maybe actually, not necessarily positive. We’ll come back to the worst tech purchases of all time. Shall I launch Austilities, Bertrand? Shall I tell my first one?

Bertrand Schmitt
Sure, Nuno, feel free.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro
Good stuff. I’ll start with maybe the one that I’ve had the longest memory on, which is the Philips Videopac. Now, many of you will have no clue what I’m talking about.

Bertrand Schmitt
No idea.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro
The Videopac. Even Bertrand, which is impressive. The Videopac was a video game console that worked with cartridges, launched obviously via Philips. I’m not sure if the one I had was actually from Philips, question mark. It was the same format and I remember it very fondly.

It was really a gaming console with a little joystick. Very basic thing. The Videopac was actually launched first thing in ’83. I’m not sure when I first started using it, but I suspect I was 7 or 8 years old, so that would have been a couple of years thereafter.

I remember it fondly. We got it from Andorra. If you guys know, I was born in Portugal. Andorra is this small-owned country between Spain and France, and they had no sales taxes back then, so you’d go there and buy stuff really cheaply. I think that’s what we bought when I went there with my parents.

I remember it very fondly. I remember playing games on it. Strangely enough, I don’t remember any of the games I played on it, but I remember it very fondly as one of my first computer experiences and stuff. That was pretty cool.

Bertrand Schmitt
Nice. I think in France. I’m not sure this one was available. At least it doesn’t ring a bell. I think we had some Atari consoles in France. Me, actually, I didn’t start with a console. I started with a regular computer. Not the PC kind. It was an Atari computer. Actually Atari 520ST, very popular in Europe.

There was also Amiga that had similar computers. It was Motorola CPU 68000 if I remember. It was my first computer. Also, could be used for gaming, of course, 3.5-inch disk, if I remember well, some colors, I would say 320 times 200 pixels. It was great.

It was a start for me of understanding computers, starting to program them. I might have started before actually to program computers, but it was not a computer I own. That was the first computer I owned. That was quite amazing at the time. I remember doing quite a bit with it.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro
My first computer was actually the Schneider Euro PC. I’d played before with the ZX Spectrum and with an Amstrad computer. Those did not belong to me. They were not my purchases. They were not for me. They belonged to my uncle.

Bertrand Schmitt
Not the same.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro
My first one that I owned was the Schneider Euro PC. It’s the first computer ever that I coded in. People probably don’t remember Schneider at all. It was a computer division.

Bertrand Schmitt
They do washing machines.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro
It was a little keyboard with the floppy drive, and then you had to connect a monitor. I had to get a monitor. Mine was color. It was really cool. It’s the first, as I said, first computer I ever coded on. I think that’s the first code I ever wrote was in basic. I played games on it.

There was this volleyball game, like beach volleyball game that I remember playing on it. It was really, really, really cool. Very fond memories of it. I still have that computer somewhere back in Portugal in storage. Probably the first defining computer experience for me.

Bertrand Schmitt
Does it still work?

Nuno Goncalves Pedro
That I do not know. I’m intrigued by it. I do not know. I suspect not, but because of wear and tear, but I’m not sure. It was last time I played with it. I don’t know. Maybe it still does.

Bertrand Schmitt
Maybe it does value as an antique, actually. You never know this kind of stuff.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro
Yes.

Bertrand Schmitt
My second big one was actually a handheld calculator, HP48X and then a later model, GX. The HP48 was really my entry, my start in the mobile computing world. It was amazing. For me, it Was my first computing device always in my pocket. It was in the mid-90s, I guess.

It was great to do basic science, maths, physics, that sort of stuff. I also use it extensively to program in assembly language, which was not supported by HP. There was a small community of crazy people like me having fun programming in assemblies or their small handheld calculator doing stuff that was supposedly impossible to do on the calculator. The funny part is that some in our group ended up working for HP, developing the next follow on calculators for HP.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro
That’s very, very cool. I have done HP48GX and I remember it fondly. I used it in college quite heavily. I did do some coding on it at some point in time. Very cumbersome device to do any coding on, but it was like the top of all the freaking calculators, graphical stuff, et cetera, et cetera. It’s like an unfair advantage back then when computers weren’t around.

Bertrand Schmitt
Maybe one more point was a great RPL, the Reverse Polish Lisp language, which was very special to this model of HP. You have to enter your calculation in a very different way compared to the calculators. I love this approach of RPL.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro
Definitely an amazing device. Following up maybe with a couple of PCs from my end. Two that come to mind, the Compact Deskpro 386S. It was a 386 from Intel. Super overengineered device. Expensive as hell. When Compaq was in their heyday, it was like a pretty chunky desktop. Did a lot of stuff on it. It’s where my coding evolved. A lot of desktop publishing, writing stuff, et cetera.

It was a significant device for me. The other one, probably immediately thereafter was my first custom-made Tower PC. I bought a Tower, and then I had my own motherboard that I bought and my own hard drive and whatever. Making just work together was in and of itself complex. I remember that fondly as well.

It’s probably the first PC where I did heavy-duty gaming, the Deskpro being more the first that I did a lot of desktop publishing in. I remember the Tower one more because of gaming actually, shockingly enough. It went with me, I think through college, if I’m not mistaken, the tower one.

Those two were my next PCs that I remember very, very, very fondly. Compaq went to hell at some point in time. They merged I think with someone. Was it Gateway or something more did they merge with?

Bertrand Schmitt
I think so. Long ago.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro
They did go to hell at some point.

Bertrand Schmitt
Yes. I think they got killed by the new approach pushed by Dell to make computers on demand. Actually, I was also a customer of Compaq. My first PC was a Compaq. It was a Compaq laptop, Compaq 286 SLT. It was a huge brick. I was just checking £14. That was my first IBM compatible PC. That was great. Technically it was my dad’s computer, but I was using it.

Then like you, at some point I made my own tower PC. Did some PC gaming from that point as well, and other stuff, of course. When you make your first Tower, that’s a special moment because you start to realize it’s all adding components that work well together. That’s a special stage in the journey.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro
Compaq was bought for $25 billion in 2002 by HP. They were Texas-based as well, so was Dell. I think Compaq was global PC maker for a while, and then Dell overtook it, and the rest, as you said, is history.

Maybe my next one was, I bought it, I think I was on vacation in England. I had saved some money and this was in the ’90s still. I’m going back in time for my Tower PC, which was the SEGA Game Gear. I never had a Game Boy, actually. I played with other people’s Game Boys, but I wanted like a graphics thing.

I know this is going to be pissing off a bunch of people. I always preferred Sonic to Super Mario, so who would have said that I would become a race car driver? I always actually preferred it. I remember it for Sonic, it was really a cool handheld console.

It was color-based, whereas the first game boys were black and white. Really, really, really very, very, very cool gaming console. The battery life wasn’t great, but it was like super cool. I used to play Sonic all the time on that thing.

Bertrand Schmitt
I might have an Atari handle at some point, but it was not a big game changer for me. I never had a Nintendo console until very recently. Me on my side, what was game changing was my first smartphone, WAP phone.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro
It’s not a smartphone.

Bertrand Schmitt
That’s why I’m saying the first WAP phone for me was a Nokia 7110. Ericsson also had another WAP phone at the time, just launched, but the 7110. What was special was it was a Matrix phone. You press a button, you have the stuff coming out. It was a very special.

That was the start of the… In Europe, what was the WAP revolution? Accessing Internet on your mobile through that WAP protocol, which was not popular in the US or in Asia, it was really especially something popular in Europe or somewhat popular, I should say. I’m not sure everyone was using that. For me that was a big step forward.

The second step was moving to the communicators through smartphone. The Nokia communicator, they are E90s and we got some Ericsson P800. These phones were for me, the first smartphones in the 2000s, up to the arrival of the iPhone, so for like 8, 9 years.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro
I Had a 7110 as well, obviously the Matrix phone. Everyone was like, oh my God. And they didn’t do anything. It just slid down. The plastic slid down, so you had access to the keys. My first phone that I recall very fondly was actually the Philips Diga. I don’t know why I have all these Philips things on my thing.

It was a very basic phone, candy bar, as they used to call it, just with a keyboard. It lasts a long time. Even the antenna broke at some point and I still kept using it. I still have it, I believe. As I may have mentioned it in the past, I actually have a collection of mobile phones. I have over 270 mobile phones.

If anyone has an idea of what I should do with that collection, for profit or non-profit, do tell me. Many things have been tried in the past, including the Computer History Museum and Mountain View, but we couldn’t come to an agreement on who would pay the valuation of the phones, which is like the most shocking thing ever. I was willing to just donate it.

The Diga was my first phone. I started collecting phones probably when I was a GSM association. That must have been around 2003, 2004. I have a lot of phones that I truly, truly love. The 7110, to your point, was a very iconic phone. The first little Ericsson one with color was also very iconic. Very, very small phones.

We had all these amazing feature phones. The Korean started really changing everything. Samsung and LG that I got as well, like very, very thin phones, slider phones, et cetera. I remember a lot of phones very fondly. My first one that I owned myself was the Philips Diga.

Bertrand Schmitt
I forgot which one was my first phone actually, because the Nokia 7110 was not my first mobile phone. I don’t remember. This one was very different for me because you had access to the Internet so that was the beginning of always on connection to the Internet.

Me I probably average two funds a year over the past 25 years, 27 years. I’m not at your 270 fund collection and I didn’t keep most of my funds I must say either gave them or resold them. Now they are good trading policies actually for mobile, Samsung and others. I’ve been doing that mostly.

For me the next big one was actually the Kindle. It was launched in the late 2000 which was around the time when I actually moved to China and getting access to foreign books was not an easy one when you were living in China. For me the E Ink device was a God given gift. It was game changing for me to be able to access all my books while I was living in China.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro
My next device was also first for me. It was my first proper watch that I bought. I’d bought some swatches and whatever, and I was always intrigued by my watches. Then when I was in my early 20s I bought the Bell & Ross. I think it’s vintage 126 130r a chronograph, very classic looking. Bell & Ross is then gone.

Bell & Ross is a French brand that manufactures in Switzerland. They’ve since gone with squared watches but back then it was classic rounded watches. I still have this watch. I just had it serviced recently. The service was like half the cost of the original watch or something.

For me, it was really cool to have it back. It was my first watch. I used it for several years. Funny story, at some point I stopped using watches and for at least 15 years. I’m probably not exaggerating, I didn’t wear a watch. My watch was my phone until quite recently where another watch changed my life. The MB&F M.A.D. editions 1s.

It’s one of these relatively nice watches. You have to apply for it, it’s a raffle, whatever, and then you pay of course. I got it, and I was like, “Oh, I’m going to go back to watches.” Now I’m going back to watches. Again, have a mini collection of watches, but it’s a very recent thing, maybe within the last year going back to watches, but I remember the Bell & Ross and I still have it.

It still looks beautiful very fondly because it was the first one. You could say, “Well, is that really tech?” It is tech. It is proper tech. It’s very mechanical automatic watch. I remember it very, very fondly.

Bertrand Schmitt
I can’t say watches changed my life.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro
Someone told me this the other day. I know this is going to look a bit weird because women also wear watches, but it’s sort of men’s jewellery kind of thing. It’s like the watch becomes one of the few jewellery pieces that you would wear in general.

Bertrand Schmitt
That and glasses. I agree with that. It didn’t have a life changing effect on me. I agree. I appreciate nice watches as well. At the same time now with digital watch, it’s a fight for your wrist. At some point I had two watches, a digital one and analogue one. Nowadays, it’s a more digital watch usually.

For me the next one was that amazing trifecta from Apple when they released the iPhone, then the iPad, then the new Apple TV and it really changed my digital life. I cannot say I was a big fan of the first iPhone because it was released without apps and without 3G, so I was not so interested.

I could see the change in UI that was impressive in mindset, in approach. Without apps, without 3G, for me, it was just a toy. When Apple released their second iPhone, I was definitely very, very excited. The first iPad also I was very excited. Apple TV, something simple that replace the control of your TV.

For me that was quite game changer in the sense that at that point I stopped watching linear TV. It was all about having access to on demand content on your TV and no more linear TV. I abandoned linear TV, cable, all of this a long, long time ago, 15 years ago.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro
The iPhone changed my life as well. By that time I was already collecting phones for quite a long time. More importantly, at that point in time I’d worked at the GSM association as the head of strategy, corporate and business development. I was at McKinsey and I had clients in the consumer electronics side, a large consumer electronics firm that she’ll go unnamed. When the iPhone hit, everything changed.

For me, it wasn’t just that I had a device that finally was relatively capable. I think the most impressive thing of the iPhone when it came out was the browsers for me. It worked really well on Wi-Fi. The cellular wasn’t great. For me, it was extra complex.

I was living in China back then. I had to get a phone. I had to figure out a way to jailbreak it because they’re selling it in the US with AT&T. I went through the whole, whole thing. That fund was definitely transformational professionally as well as I was working around a lot of topics that related to product management, product planning and the client that she’ll still go unnamed was like, “Guys, we need to now compete on smartphones and like this new thing, this new category.”

It’s really a shame because I think there was a lot of diversity prior to that with feature phones. They all look very differently, they had different functionalities, et cetera. In some ways early on, maybe the smartphones had some diversity as well, but over time they’ve all become the same mono blocky thing. Along the way I missed the good old days of different formats and the BlackBerry was there and all these things were there with different formats.

Bertrand Schmitt
There was much more experimentation.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro
Exactly. The reason why I used to buy so many phones and get so many phones and started collecting was they were great proxies to consumer experiences on the go. They were great proxies. Like if you have this phone, this is how you’d use it and this is how you would basically interact with different services and different apps, et cetera. Obviously that became less diverse as the world really inflected to go into Android and iOS, so Apple World and then the Android empowered world. Obviously it became less interesting in some ways.

Bertrand Schmitt
In some ways we are going to the end of the form factor. We’re at the end game of that specific form factor. At some point you add a screen and a start button, a central button and then no more button and just a screen and from there is nowhere else to go.

It was an interesting evolution. Obviously you could argue there is somewhere to go. We can see that, we talk about it, but you have foldable for instance, but going back me now I will talk on the audio side there was a big, again, some Apple launch was the Airpod. For me. What was amazing with the first Airpod is that having used so many different headsets over the years. I felt it was one of the very first one that just worked. I can take it from my pocket, put it in my ears, accept a call. I had the guarantee it will work.

Before I would not be able to do that. I have a call, I have a headset, I know it won’t work if I try to accept the call and put my headset at the same time. Having started with Bluetooth headsets from maybe 2000 when at some point in time early on when the first Bluetooth standout was released, so I tried them all, and I was shocked how good Apple managed to make the experience.

Another one on your side was, I forgot which model but my first Bose ENC headphone for travel definitely changed my life. When you are travelling by plane to be able to hear properly either music or movies with less outside sound. That made travelling by plane especially much more enjoyable experience.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro
On my end, I agree with the AirPods I think it’s just the fact that they worked was shocking. The really good audio quality for the size they had and the weight they had. I have around 270 phones. I don’t have around 270 headphones, but I probably have enough to do a museum as well of them. I have a lot of ones that I remember fondly.

One of the early Bang and Olufsen ones that was super chichi, super high end in ear but with a thing around your ear before the Beats thing started becoming very popular. I remember the Beats, one of the last Beats before they were acquired by Apple. The AirPods Max were great. I have for anything like I have OnePlus phones, so I have OnePlus AirPods things. They probably have a different name for OnePlus.

There’s all these different ones that I’ve had over the years that are great. I remember fondly the Master and Dynamic, one of the early ones that I got over ear ones. Beautiful looking. The Master and Dynamic are just gorgeous looking headphones shout out to the founder there.

AirPods I have a lot of memories with a lot of different ones, but maybe not as striking as the ones you mentioned with the Bose and with the AirPod. Going back to the TV thing, obviously Apple TV was transformational for me, and I’ve had all these different things like Amazon, Fire TV and all these different solutions out there.

But one that I was transformation for me was the Logitech review. Google TV. This was the first implementation of Google TV as an operating system thing to work on your TV and if you guys don’t remember it looked like a really wasn’t super large but a relatively mid-size setup box with a keyboard. That’s the funny thing, you had actually a keyboard, so you could write stuff on it and you could browse.

Now it’s important to mention that at that time I lived in China and because I lived in China I could go to Chinese websites and watch stuff. I won’t go into more details than that. I was living in China but to be very, very clear, in some ways I could already see the future of streaming TV. It was very, very obvious because of that experience that I had. This was circa 2008, 2009, I would suspect. It was relatively early on, maybe a little bit later, maybe 2010.

But anyway, but circa that time I could see that streaming was a much better experience than just linear TV because I could watch all these series whenever I wanted, all the stuff that I could watch whenever I wanted. In some ways I was seeing the future of TV back then on what we would have later on with the Hulu’s of the world, with the Netflixes, et cetera.

It was funny, it’s just a bit by accident. It was a device combination with the country. It’s China and Google TV and you can browse. If you can browse, what can you watch on TV? Well, you can watch sort of whatever is available. Obviously the bandwidth wasn’t great, but it was for me a revolutionary experience about this realization. TV is going to go this way rather than stay linear. It doesn’t make sense to stay linear except for things that are time-sensitive like sports and news.

Bertrand Schmitt
I’m not a big sports fan in terms of watching sports TV so for me, it didn’t really matter. But I agree with you, news and sports were probably the only thing that could still make somewhat sense on a linear TV. I was like you living in China, accessing Internet TV from my Apple TV. This was totally game changer.

I don’t think I look ever back since that time, and I was still surprised to see so many people still using linear TV for a while until maybe what 2020, you could argue with COVID. That was when most solution when streaming and when most providers went full streaming. I felt it took a while to get there. But yeah, I couldn’t go back, that’s for sure.

I remember my first Nintendo console actually was a Nintendo Switch and I remember getting it the first day of its release actually in Tokyo in Japan. I really love this device. I felt this was powerful enough for a console that was portable where before portable consoles were not so exciting for me. I was very impressed how you could use it portable connected to a TV the way you can detach Joy cons.

I felt was very amazing in terms of piece of hardware and of course great, great games from Nintendo especially and others from Zelda to Mario Kart. Very impressed by the Nintendo Switch. I just got a Switch 2 and even more impressed this time. Really powerful and amazing form factor, for me, quite a game changer, especially when you travel.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro
My first big high-end gaming console was the PlayStation 2 and that was awesome. I mean it launched in 2000. I didn’t get one of the early ones. It’s probably a couple of years after that I got it. But definitely that was the first console that I really cherished and played a bunch of games on. That’s when it came to bear. It’s very funny. Many years before, many, many years before I went racing cars, I was already excited by car games, Gran Turismo and a variety of other games.

Call of Duty and Gran Turismo are probably the two franchises which stood the test of time for me in game console. PlayStation 2 is responsible for it all. It was the first console that was like, oh this is really cool, you can do really, really cool things with this and high quality games, and it’s specialized and all that stuff. In some ways I never really went back to PC gaming, which is interesting.

I started in PC game, I never went back, and I still do a little bit of mobile gaming on my phone. Marvel Continent of Champions is still my game of choice, but on the console side is sort of where I experiment with the higher end kind of games. Now being an investor in some of the guys who actually develop those games is exciting. You get to see stuff before it comes out, et cetera. But the PlayStation 2 was the genesis of the higher high-end experience in gaming for me.

Bertrand Schmitt
That’s interesting because me, I’ve mostly stayed to PC gaming actually on mobile. Even if I was spending so much time analysing the mobile gaming market, I was not so interested myself on the mobile gaming market. I would play a bit of very basic stuff from Candy Crush to others, but not the more advanced games because I would just go for PC gaming for advanced game or Nintendo Switch when I wanted something more simple, portable, immediately working.

That’s the issue with PC gaming, it’s rarely immediately working. The last device that really impressed me from Apple was my MacBook Pro M1 when Apple released the first Apple Silicon. Very, very impressed because one it worked and that switch from intel to ARM where it’s simply working, you were not losing much in terms of power if you are emulating was just amazing. Smoothest architecture change I have ever experienced.

That’s one on the technical side very impressed, but two very impressed by the performance and more importantly by the lack of noise from the fan. I mean of course it has a fan, but you don’t hear it most of the time. For me, that was the one thing I was looking for in PC, which in a mobile computer, is to have no noise when I’m using it. I was very impressed by that change of architecture. Very smooth. We’ll talk more maybe about that. Microsoft never made a smooth change of architecture, but also the fact that they managed to do something on one side very powerful and at the same time very silent.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro
I had a lot of devices from Apple that were defining for me the MacBook Air, my first MacBook Pro back in the day with intel and those are the days with intel chips. The MacBook Pro with Silicon done by Apple was defining, redefining for me. I’ve had a couple of laptops that were really redefining to me and honestly, most of them were Apple.

I agree with you that that’s probably one of the last devices I’ve had, the iMac. I’ve had a bunch of iMacs from Apple. That’s my desktop experience. I honestly love all of them. There is a generation, I forget what generation it was that was a little bit funky on the quality of the screen, but they always look great. The new iMacs have been amazing. I don’t have the old ones, but like the new iMacs, that’s my main desktop experience, and it’s still a really cool experience.

Bertrand Schmitt
Maybe talking about quality, I had a lot of issues with my Apple laptops. Broken keyboard, broken screen, broken video card. They actually spent quite some time at the repair shop and not been a great part of my experience having Mac computers for 12, 13 years.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro
I think I had one issue with the storage on one of the MacBook airs where I had to change storage on it. It was a little bit complicated. Then I’ve had issues on the iMacs. As I said, one of them, the screen just stopped working properly and they couldn’t really fix it. It’s really a dud. It’s just a hard drive, basically. Then one of the more recent ones has a flaw in it. I thought was related to memory. I tried everything to save it and it jumps things.

Then I have my latest, one latest generation of the iMac which is doing fine thus far. Let’s see how it withstands the test of time. To your point, some issues, sometimes some of their devices and they really don’t withstand the test of time, they don’t work well over 4 or 5 years, which is, I guess they expect you to switch stuff.

Maybe my next device, being from Portugal, at some point I became a lover of coffee. Interestingly enough, I don’t think I was a lover of coffee while I lived in Portugal. At some point I wanted to have a machine at my place that would give me that experience. I had a nearly espresso, I think it was from Gaggia, was done by Gaggia. Gaggia is obviously, I believe, an Italian manufacturer.

That machine had a bunch of issues later on, talking about issues. At some point I just gave up on it. I gave up on just having espressos or double espressos. I was a purist back then. Then at some point I went to the Nespresso selling to the dark side route with Vertuo. It’s really a great experience, the Nespresso Vertuo experience. But I’ve sold now I have what people in Portugal would call barely coffee. It’s just shot in there.

For me, having the coffee is a moment of pause. It’s where my brain stops a little bit. Historically, I used to do it after lunch, at the end of my lunch, and now I sometimes do it in the morning as well, to be honest. But my reaction to caffeine is different than many other people. Caffeine is a bit of a downer for me. I think there’s a percentage of people in the world, maybe 2, 3%, for which caffeine is a little bit a downer rather than an upper.

I can have coffee at any point of the day, which is like a superpower, I guess. But, yeah, the machines are always a moment of pause for me. It’s a moment where I just collect my thoughts, slow down, and then I do enjoy the coffee. That’s the meaningful part of that tech for me.

Bertrand Schmitt
Yeah, I was a big fan of Nespresso for, I don’t know, at least easily 10 years. Also, again, especially useful when you were living in China. At some point, I just couldn’t stand it any more because the difference of quality, the coffee, the milk machine was just too big. I actually moved to a Breville coffee machine. Breville Barista Touch Impress.

Since then, oh, my God, I will not touch an espresso machine again. I don’t need to go to any coffee store. I might go once in a while, but not because it’s better coffee. I have excellent coffee at home, excellent latte at home, and I’m very happy. [inaudible 00:30:16]. I had one reason to go out, which was for better coffee, but not any more.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro
Yeah, I’m still looking through the startup that shows me a machine that can create that amazing coffee. I’ve seen a couple over the years that were very promising but nobody scaled. Most of them have gone under sadly, et cetera. I’m still waiting for that perfect machine.

Bertrand Schmitt
Drive by Villa. It’s amazing.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro
I will look into it. Maybe another kind of experience is related, maybe more to my cars. Also, late boomer, as I mentioned earlier in terms of car racing, but also late boomer in terms of becoming a car guy. I was a digital car guy, I guess before I was a physical car guy and paying attention to the car, taking care of the car. There’s a couple of elements that make that of some importance for me.

For some reason I have a couple of Porsches. For some reason Porsche still has this thing where you either have Apple CarPlay or Android Auto. For someone who has 270 phones, that’s kind of a problem because you are switching between both operating systems and both deployments of those on the car.

At some point I had to get a hack around it, and so I started toying around. There was an early one that I had that I hated. I’ll come back to that later. But then I came around and found Autocast, and now I use Autocast devices. To be clear, Autocast doesn’t pay me at all for me to do any advertising.

They mostly work. I have some quirks once in a while on some older cars with the Autocast deployment, but it allows me to just go into the car. Worst case if I’ve just switched phones, have to connect Bluetooth to it the first time and after that it just connects, and I have the experience I would have. It’s been a great life changer for me.

Bertrand Schmitt
Interesting. I had no idea such a device existed. Actually, I would talk about the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold. We talked before about how the defining hardware of smartphones didn’t change much. I was always very impressed by Samsung innovation and with the Z Fold that made me switch back. Actually at some point I was Apple, and then I was Apple and Android, and then I completely left the Apple ecosystem I don’t know, 18 months ago.

But my first step was moving to the Z Fold, and I was actually quite pleased at Apple. I was like where is our innovation? But Samsung actually innovated with the Foldable category. It’s now the Z Fold 7. I’m waiting for it tomorrow. But yeah, it was for me truly game changing as a device that is a tablet that is in your pocket.

I’ve been very excited and that’s been the start of the end for me of the Apple ecosystem because once I moved there I moved to a Samsung Tab Ultra. I actually even went back to the Windows world. I’ve been very impressed. My latest Windows PC is a Surface Pro 11 with intel inside, and it’s an amazing device. Finally, a combination of laptop and tablet all in one that works great.

I’ve been very impressed actually, and we’ll talk more. I’ve been muted. Disappointed multiple times by the Microsoft Windows environment, but I feel they’re starting to turn the corner and be more innovative.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro
From my end, I collect phones, so there’s always what are my favourite phones kind of discussion. On the fold side I do have, I think I have the Z Fold 5 if I’m not mistaken. That’s the latest one I had from Samsung on the foldable side. Flip I had a Red Magic Nubia. I’ll come back to that. I have obviously had the Razr, the RE edition of the Razr as a smartphone which is pretty cool. Motorola as a flip as well.

On the foldable side I’ve tried a lot and I end up going always back to the same one. I think it’s just the format ratio is my favourite one which is the OnePlus open. I think there’s now some discussion they might launch a new version. They haven’t launched one in a couple of years, but that phone is really, really good.

I’m a huge OnePlus fan. I love their phones. I think they’re really well done. They get the thin layer of adaptation well on those phones. For photos, I’m still a Samsung Galaxy Ultra guy. They have the best cameras if you want to take amazing photos. Normally that’s my go to and then for gaming because obviously I’m still play games on phones.

There’s my two go tos the Asus ROG, ROG series and then to be honest my most favourite one which is the newbie Red Magic the Pro editions which have the little fan on it with colors and then cooling and add-ons and stuff. Really it’s my go to for gaming it’s really… Unfortunately the cameras are not very good but for gaming it’s really a great experience.

Then last but not the least toy around a lot with phones. The nothing phones. I currently have a pre-launch edition. They just launched a proper edition for the three, but I have a pre-launch edition for the three, and I still love them. Very clean phones, very easy to use. [inaudible 00:34:56]. Great mid-tier. Probably one of the best mid-tier devices out there right now for Android. That’s my go tos on the mobile phone side.

Bertrand Schmitt
Interesting. Me beyond the phones, beyond the computers, one gadget I really used actually a lot is my Sony Alpha S73 that I’ve been using for maybe 5 years for video calls. When I am at my desk I use this camera. It’s a great 2470 lens. It has been amazing, and they kept upgrading the firmware, improving the quality of what you can do, improving the colors. I’ve been very pleased with that Sony Alpha S73 for doing video calls, which might be overkill to be frank, but really a great device.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro
On the tablet side obviously I’ve had a bunch of the iPads. The first iPad was interesting, maybe not as seminal as that was for you, Bertrand. The iPad Airs I particularly like. I still have one. I use the iPad Air. I’ve tried at some point in time taking them with me on my business trips. It just doesn’t work for me. I still need to bring my MacBook Pro with me because I might need to do some actual fundamental work on stuff.

I used to use it for shorter trips, and at some point I just became painful. I mostly use it to consume other content. Like a little bit like my second or third screen. It might be I’m watching TV second screen with iPad Air and then third screen on my phone. Honestly, my girlfriend doesn’t like that very much. I need to. I can’t even use my phone while I’m watching something with her. I’m like, okay, cool. Right now I’ve gone from three screens to one screen. Only one screen at a time and pay attention to my girlfriend. I’m more present than ever and.

Bertrand Schmitt
Continuing outside of phones, computers. One device I really like now to consume content on the go specifically, it’s the Xreal One Pro which is classified weirdly as an AR device. But I truly use it to basically consume content on the go typically, but also it could be in the bedroom. It’s just a great device to watch videos mostly, could be shows, could be movies. It projects in front of you a huge screen. It’s really a great quality OLED screen. It includes audio as well. It’s really an AR glass for me. It’s really impressive. It has replaced in many situations a tablet to simply watch content.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro
From my end, moving on, going back to cars, one thing that matters is taking care of your tires. Only point of contact with the road, just to remind people. Over the years I’ve tried a bunch of solutions to inflate and deflate my tires and particularly to inflate tires. In particular on the go and everything’s very clunky, very big whatever.

Finally, I got to more the portable side of the fence and the one I do use, again I have no payment from these guys whatsoever, but I like their solutions are the Airmoto tire inflators. I’ve used a couple of others by other brands that are similar form factors but the Airmoto is the one I keep coming back to. It doesn’t last forever, but it’s enough. I can guarantee you to inflate a tire quite significantly or to inflate all your four tires if they’re a little bit under as well.

Really pretty amazing solution to inflate your tires over when you need to inflate them. If you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place, at least inflate them and if it’s like for example a small leak or whatever then it will sort it out. Really, really good solution for that.

Bertrand Schmitt
Interesting device, and it looks quite small I must say.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro
It is pretty small.

Bert