AwesomeCast 776: Tim Cook Steps Down, Game Pass Gets Weird & Can PurePlank Fix the Dad Bod? | AwesomeCast 776
This week on AwesomeCast, Sorg and Dave Podnar balanced gadget talk with bigger tech industry shifts, making for an episode that felt especially grounded in how people actually use technology day to day.
Sorg kicked things off with his first impressions of the PurePlank, a workout board built around helping users perform planks and related core exercises more comfortably. For someone juggling travel, production work, and the ongoing battle against the “dad bod,” the biggest question was not whether the gadget looked slick, but whether it could fit into real life. Sorg talked through the hardware, the app, and how much easier it felt compared to traditional planking, especially for someone not starting from an advanced fitness baseline.
Dave followed that with a check-in on the ResMed AirSense 11 CPAP, and it was one of the most practically useful conversations in the episode. He talked about the machine setup, the nasal pillow mask, how the connected app tracks usage and sleep events, and how quickly he started noticing a difference. It was less about specs and more about what good recovery and better sleep can unlock.
The show also took time to recognize Taher Elgamal for Arab American History Month. If you’ve ever trusted a secure connection online, his work helped make that possible. The conversation framed him as one of those foundational names in tech history that many people benefit from without ever hearing about.
On the news side, the hosts reacted to Microsoft’s latest Game Pass Ultimate move, especially the tradeoff involving future Call of Duty titles. For heavy COD players, it may feel like a downgrade. For everyone else, it might actually be a better value. That led naturally into broader talk about how platforms sell convenience, subscriptions, and perceived value.
Sorg also shared how Reddit is increasingly replacing Facebook and other feeds in his daily routine. The appeal was not just the communities, but also the sense that the experience feels more useful and a little less exhausting. Paying to remove ads did not hurt either.
Later, the hosts got into DaVinci Resolve’s still-image color tools, with Dave offering perspective from the photography side. The big takeaway: Resolve looks compelling if your world is already built around video color workflows, but it still does not feel like a true Lightroom replacement for most photographers.
The show wrapped its main topics with breaking Apple news, as Tim Cook steps down as CEO and John Ternus steps into the role. Dave and Sorg talked about Cook’s long influence on Apple’s supply chain, operations, and overall stability, and what it could mean to have a hardware-focused leader take over next.
It’s a great episode if you like your tech talk grounded in actual use, not just headlines.
PurePlank — https://gopureplank.com/
ResMed AirSense 11 — https://www.resmed.com/en-us/products/cpap/machines/airsense-11/
Taher Elgamal — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taher_Elgamal
Tim Cook stepping down / Apple leadership story — https://www.macworld.com/article/3119381/tim-cook-stepping-down-as-apple-ceo-in-shock-announcement.html
DaVinci Resolve photo/still image discussion source — https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=25876562148688561&set=a.334146796690114
