Mac Power Users Relay FM

Each week I learn something new and exciting

I owe much of my love of the Mac and productivity apps to this show. I enjoy the new cohost and most of my issues with the show have nothing to do with this recent change.

MPU episodes take a long time to get off the ground. You can skip the first 10-25 percent of most episodes which is uninteresting followup and meta discussion rather than meat.

Once you have listened to this show for about a year, the episode topics, app recommendations, and guest start to become very repetitive. Occasional guests bring something great to the table but it is difficult to sift through. All of the great tips on this show are thrilling at first but after a while, how many times do I need to hear about Bartender, SaneBox, and Hazel?

It is also clear that app sponsors get more attention in discussion while other software is more often ignored. One of many examples is PDF Pen which is a buggy, overpriced, slow mess of an app on Mac and especially iOS, but gets discussed all the time. On the flip side, PDF Expert has never received the same treatment, even though it is adored by Apple fans.

Anyway. Just my two cents. This show is great but I think it has lost its repeat listening worth over the years.

I agree with some of the other sentiments here. Something about this show feels very commercial now, whereas it used to feel more like genuine opinions. Nowadays, I feel like every episode touts the benefits of TextExpander, 1Password, and OmniFocus. And then there are the ones that DON'T pay to advertise, but they get free advertising anyway: Keyboard Maestro, Hazel, Alfred, Setapp (and apps within Setapp like CleanMyMac, iStat Menus, Bartender, etc.), ScreenFlow, Ulysses, LaunchBar, etc....

I'd blame it on losing Katie Floyd and picking up Stephen Hackett, but it seems the problem was there even during the last year or two with Katie. I think it's more to do with them being part of RelayFM. Back when they were on the 5by5.tv network, or before they were on a network, it seemed to be more honest. Now to be clear, I'm not a fool, and I get what David Sparks always says: "This is how I pay for my shoes, gang." So, my advice to new listeners is to take it all with a grain of salt. Yeah, we get that David and Stephen need to make a living and I would never begrudge them the right to do that. They've found a niche market and they're good at what they do. But the commercialization of the show brings it from a 5 star show down to a 4 star show. It's still entertaining and I like listening to it. But I know I'm going to hear the same points week after week about their favorite products (at least some of which PAY to be their favorites). Occasionally, I pick up some new information about some new products or some new insight into software and hardware updates. But I miss the SOUL of this show that existed back at the beginning. It's feeling a little old, predictable, recycled, and well, commercialized.