The CultCast

This week: Apple’s about to overhaul the iPad, and it’s long overdue!  Plus: why Steve Jobs was cool with your kids using an iPad, but not his own; how the technology we love might be making us all stupid;  and we wrap up with an all new CultCast Choices, the game of great gifts with strange side effects...

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CultCloth will keep your iPhone 7, Apple Watch, Mac and iPad sparkling clean, and for a limited time you can use code CULTCAST to score a free CleanCloth with any order at CultCloth.co.
 
We also want to give Kevin MacLeod at incompetech.com a  thanks for the great music you hear on today's show.
On the show this week

@erfon / @bst3r / @lkahney

Westworld-style folding phone might get real this year
  • Smartphones that fold out into a tablet are one of the many awesome inventions the creators of Westworld promised we have to look forward to in the future. But according to a new rumor, Samsung might make them a reality in 2017.
New iPads to arrive next month during first Apple Park event
  • Apple will announce its next-generation iPad lineup next month during its very first event at Apple Park, according to a new report.
  • Sources say that production of the new 10.5-inch iPad Pro has been brought forward for the launch. The device is expected to be accompanied by an updated 12.9-inch iPad Pro and a more affordable 9.7-inch iPad.
  • Apple “is expected to unveil the new iPad at a product event to be held in early April to mark the inauguration of Apple’s new headquarters in California,”
  • The new 10.5″ iPad would have the exact same resolution as the 12.9″ iPad Pro (2732 x 2048), but the same pixel density of the iPad mini (326 ppi instead of 264 ppi). Crunch the numbers, do a little Pythagorean Theorem, and you end up with a screen 10.5″ diagonal
 
Server logs reveal Apple is testing four new iPad models
  • Device logs obtained by mobile marketing firm Fiksu appear to show that four different iPad models are currently being tested in the San Francisco Bay Area.
  • Just because four model numbers have been discovered doesn’t mean Apple will release four different iPads this month.
  • Last year, Fiksu saw new device model names pop up in its logs about a month before the new iPads were announced.
 
Steve Jobs Was a Low-Tech Parent

When Steve Jobs was running Apple, he was known to call journalists to either pat them on the back for a recent article or, more often than not, explain how they got it wrong. I was on the receiving end of a few of those calls. But nothing shocked me more than something Mr. Jobs said to me in late 2010 after he had finished chewing me out for something I had written about an iPad shortcoming.

  • New York Times reporter Nick Bilton said he once assumingly asked Jobs, “So your kids must love the iPad?”
  • “They haven’t used it. We limit how much technology our kids use at home.”
  • “Every evening Steve made a point of having dinner at the big long table in their kitchen, discussing books and history and a variety of things,”
  • Since then, I’ve met a number of technology chief executives and venture capitalists who say similar things: they strictly limit their children’s screen time, often banning all gadgets on school nights, and allocating ascetic time limits on weekends.
  • Evan Williams, a founder of Blogger, Twitter and Medium, and his wife, Sara Williams, said that in lieu of iPads, their two young boys have hundreds of books (yes, physical ones) that they can pick up and read anytime.
  • Ali Partovi, a founder of iLike and adviser to Facebook, Dropbox and Zappos, said " I wouldn’t dream of limiting how much time a kid can spend with her paintbrushes, or playing her piano, or writing, I think it’s absurd to limit her time spent creating computer art, editing video, or computer programming,”
 
This Minecraft Hololens demo is incredible
 
Fartman, Leander’s alter ego

 

Direct download: CultCast_275_-_How_Apple_will_make_iPad_SEXY_again_.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 1:18am PDT