The CultCast

This week: is a secret Apple project stalling Mac updates?  It wouldn’t be the first time… Plus: Apple teases Black Friday deals; Airport routers are dead, and the Mac Pro might be next;  the future of Time Machine; why iPad should be iOS/OS X hybrid; and Jony Ive’s new role designing Apple itself.

This episode supported by

Might Tees’ artful Steve Jobs, Woz, Apple and Star Trek tees are worn Will Wheaton, LeVar Burton, co-founders at Bad Robot, Chris Hardwick, Veronica Belmont, and even Steve Wozniak himself.  And without Might Tees, there’d be Leander have Erfon would have never met.  Grab a piece of CultCast history!  While supplies last, get 60% off any order at MightTees.com and use code CultCast at checkout.

CultCloth will keep your iPhone 7, Apple Watch, Mac and iPad sparkling clean, and for a limited time you can get 20% off your order with code JETBLACK at CultCloth.co.
 
And check out Cult of Mac’s new, free fitness eBook! This ebook is your practical how-to guide, covering step by step everything you need to know about getting fit with Apple’s devices.
 
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
 
  • Apple is teasing a one-day shopping event for Black Friday that could bring tasty discounts on its latest products.
  • Apple chose not to participate in Black Friday sales last year, so fans were forced to look elsewhere for price cuts on Apple products.
  • In 2014, Apple took a different approach to Black Friday, offering free gift cards with certain purchases instead of cutting prices. Customers got up to $150 for buying a Mac, up to $75 with an iPad, and up to $50 with an iPod.
  • It’s also worth remembering that over the holiday period, the company offers free two-day shipping on almost all online purchases, while its retail stores are open longer.
 
  • According to Bloomberg, Apple has disbanded the division dedicated to developing its Airport wireless routers.
  • The product line — which spawned the AirPort Express, AirPort Extreme, and AirPort Time capsule, which Apple continues to sell — hasn’t been updated since 2013.
 
  • He’s killing ports and headphone jacks left and right. The latest MacBooks value form over function. He’s designing gold watches for the 1 percent.
  • And now his glossy new photo book, Designed by Apple in California, looks like a $300, linen-bound ego trip.
  • "I see why some people think Designed by Apple in California could be Ive’s goodbye to Apple. But it feels to me like Ive’s heartfelt goodbye to his best friend and colleague, five years gone. I don’t think Jony Ive is going anywhere."
 
  • Having previously been announced as the co-designer (with BFF Marc Newson) of the Christmas tree at London’s famous Claridge’s hotel, Ive’s creation was unveiled over the weekend, and — surprise — it’s a plain tree with no decorations, set on a white background.
  • “There are few things more pure and beautiful than nature, so that was our starting point, layering various iterations of organic forms with technology,” Ive and Newson said. “Our aim was to create an all-enveloping magical experience that celebrates our enormous respect for tradition while recognising our excitement about the future and things to come.”

Direct download: CultCast_259_-_Secret_Apple_project_stalling_Mac_updates_.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:04am PDT

This week: the reviews are in! We’ll tell you what praises and complaints reviewers have about new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar.  Plus: the one Touch Bar feature you’ll absolutely covet; why the new “Designed by Apple in California” book is an artifact Apple fans will love; Apple quietly rebuilds a library of their gadgets long past; how to get the best Black Friday deals; and Buster reviews the hawt new Mavic Pro drone by DJI, then crashes it into a cliff. 
 
This episode supported by
 
Harry’s super-sharp, German-made razors ship free right to your door and for way less than the drugstore razors. Get a free trial set at Harrys.com and score free post shave balm with code CultCast at checkout.

 

Might Tees’ artful Steve Jobs, Woz, Apple, Star Trek, and Star Wars tees are worn Will Wheaton, LeVar Burton, co-founders at Bad Robot, Chris Hardwick, Veronica Belmont, and even Steve Wozniak himself.  And without Might Tees, there’d be no CultCast, as Leander and Erfon would never have met.  Grab a piece of CultCast history!  While supplies last, get 60% off any order at MightTees.com and use code CultCast at checkout.

CultCloth will keep your iPhone 7, Apple Watch, Mac and iPad sparkling clean, and for a limited time you can get 20% off your order with code JETBLACK 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
 
MacBook Pro reviews roundup: Promising, not groundbreaking
So what do the early reviews make of Apple’s new pro laptop? In a nutshell, that it’s futuristic, but maybe not an entirely successful device for present-day users.
  • Wired: The new MacBook Pro is a terrific laptop and, like the super-skinny MacBook, a clear indication of where most of the computing world is going. But comes with growing pains
  • Techcrunch: The less celebrated spec bumps are what make the new Pro a worthy upgrade. Better processors, more storage, a brighter display and better speakers are all wrapped up in a sleeker and lighter package than before… The Touch Bar feels like a nice bonus for the time being.
  • ArsTechnica‘s Andrew Cunningham writes, “The more I use the Touch Bar, the more I become convinced of its potential utility” — although a lot of its ability to replace the old function buttons remains hypothetical for now.”
    • Industry-leading storage performance.
    • Touchbar get 1.3Gbps WiFI (like 2015 model) instead of 867Mbps.
  • Walt Mossberg describes the Touch Bar as having “potential, but it’s not magic.”
  • ARS: CPU performance increases by an amount that’s roughly proportionate to the 200MHz maximum clock speed increase, and GPU performance increases by around 10 percent. It’s not nothing...
  • WSJ:  “it’s a dongle nightmare.” The SD card slot is particularly missed.
  • WSJ: A Touch Bar, Touch ID and new design are tempting, but you’ll get the same performance and battery with the older model… So how do you decide? Do you invest in the present—the “old” MacBook Pro with performance, good-enough portability, a keyboard to cherish and lots of ports? Or do you invest in the future—a beautiful, highly portable machine with new tricks? Or maybe you do what I’m doing: Stare down at your three-year-old laptop and wonder if you can tough it out another year or two while this sorts itself out.
 
MacBook Pro Touch Bar lets users skip through YouTube ads
  • First spotted by users on Reddit, at present the fancy new Touch Bar lets users scrub through otherwise unskippable ads so you can start watching videos straight away.
  • “In Safari, the touchbar [sic] will pop up a scrubbing control whenever a video begins to play,” Redditor RomansFiveEight writes. “Amazingly, you can use that to scrub THROUGH an ad, even a non-skippable 30 second pre-roll ad; and begin your video right away!”
 
Apple chronicles 20 years of iconic design in pricey new book
  • Apple has announced that it will be debuting a new hardbound book, entitled “Designed by Apple in California,” chronicling 20 years of its groundbreaking designs — boasting 450 photographs of past and present Apple products.
  • The book, which is dedicated to the memory of Steve Jobs, will also include exclusive details on the design processes used by Apple’s design team under the leadership of Jony Ive.
  • The photos contained are all shot by photographer Andrew Zuckerman, a filmmaker and photographer who has previously shot portraits of Judi Dench, Clint Eastwood, Ted Kennedy, and others.
  • “Designed by Apple in California”
  • it is available in two sizes — including a small 10.20” x 12.75” edition for $199 and a large version sized at 13” x 16.25” — costing $299.
  • Specially milled German paper
  • Gilded matte silver edges
  • Low-ghost inks
 
Jony Ive goes inside Apple’s design lab in new video
  • Going inside Apple’s design lab is a rare privilege some Apple execs don’t even get, but Jony Ive is giving the world a glimpse inside his lab to celebrate the company’s new book.
 
Apple had to buy back old products featured in its new design book
  • According to a new interview with Jony Ive, Apple had to actually go out and buy copies of its old products in order to photograph them for its new $300 coffee table book
  • “[W]e’ve been so consumed by our current and future work we came to realise we didn’t have a catalogue of the physical products,” Ive told design journal Wallpaper*. ” … Many of the products that you see, we actually had to go out and purchase. It’s a rather shameful admission, but it’s just not an area that we really invested much time or energy in.”
  • Shortly after he returned to the company in the late 1990s, Steve Jobs gave Apple’s historical archive — comprising records that management at Apple had kept since the mid-1980s — to Stanford University Libraries because he didn’t want Apple to be fixated on the past.
  • A few years after that, in 1996, an ex-Apple employee named David Pakman who had worked there from 1991 through 1997 emailed Steve to suggest staging a celebratory event for Apple’s thirtieth birthday. He received a simple answer: Apple is focused on the future, not the past. —Steve
  • Fortunately, things are changing, Ive said. Around eight years ago, the company felt an “obligation” to go out and start building up an archive of every product it had released.
 
Liveblog: The best Black Friday deals for 2016
 
Mavic Pro—10 years ago you’d need a helicopter to get footage like this
Direct download: CultCast_258_-MacBook_Pro_w_TouchBar__the_good_the_bad_the_ugly.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 11:00pm PDT

This week: early reviews show new MacBook Pro is a video editing powerhouse; Apples massive interest in augmented reality; rumors of a Jet White iPhone; AirPods to finally start shipping; new dongle discounts; and finally—is Apple still developing an electric car?

This episode supported by

Might Tees’ artful Steve Jobs, Woz, Apple and Star Trek tees are worn Will Wheaton, LeVar Burton, co-founders at Bad Robot, Chris Hardwick, Veronica Belmont, and even Steve Wozniak himself.  And without Might Tees, there’d be Leander have Erfon would have never met.  Grab a piece of CultCast history!  While supplies last, get 60% off any order at MightTees.com and use code CultCast at checkout.

CultCloth will keep your iPhone 7, Apple Watch, Mac and iPad sparkling clean, and for a limited time you can get 20% off your order with code JETBLACK at CultCloth.co.
 
Learn how to get in shape using your Watch and iPhone! Sign up for Cult of Mac's new FREE Fitness ebook.
 
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
 
AirPods supposedly land in Apple stores next week
  • According to one Apple fan, who spoke to an employee at Conrad, an Apple authorized reseller in Germany, AirPods will be delivered to stores next Friday, November 17.
  • “I have just talked with an employee of the Conrad Online Store, since I am there on 14.10 the AirPods ordered and I wanted to cancel today,” he explained to Apfelpage.de. “According to information from the employee, they have stockpiles from 17.11, I will then have them between November 18-19.
 
MacBook Pro with Touch Bar moves one step closer to shipping
  • “Multiple reports collated by AppleInsider and other sources show that Apple is gearing up for the first wave of shipments of the 13- and 15-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, in every configuration,”
  • The first wave of shipments is expected to reach customers as early as November 11. Those who ordered before the shipping estimate slipped should expect to receive them by November 17, though some could be waiting until November 25.
 
New MacBook Pro has already outsold every other notebook in 2016
  • latest model generated over seven times the revenue that the MacBook 12-inch did during its April 2015 launch. The new model’s sales already equal 78 percent of all the revenue generated by the MacBook 12-inch since it became available, and has accumulated more revenue than any other laptop this year.
  • Slice Intelligence found 40 percent of Apple laptop owners who purchased a MacBook in 2014 bought their next laptop with another brand. Dell and Asus computers were the most popular laptops for people who previously purchased a MacBook.
 
The truth about the 2016 MacBook Pro 13” (@JonnyLewisFilms)
  • Jonathan Morris pits a specs’d out HP Specter to a 13” MacBook Pro
  • Premier takes 9+ minutes to export, Final Cut 1:20
 
Dongle Discount!  Apple Drops Prices on USB-C Adapters
In response to Mac outrage, Apple has temporarily dropped the prices on their adapters.
USB-C to USB Adapter - Was $19, now $9
USB-C Digital AV Multiport Adapter - Was $69, now $49
USB-C VGA Multiport Adapter - Was $69, now $49
USB-C to Lightning Cable (1m) - Was $25, now $19
USB-C to Lightning Cable (2m) - Was $35, now $29
- Apple has also introduced some significant price cuts to the 4K and 5K LG UltraFine displays that were announced at its October 27 Mac event.
- The LG UltraFine 5K Display is now priced at $974, a $325 price cut from its original price of $1,299.95.
- The LG UltraFine 4K Display is now priced at $524, a $175 price cut from its original price of $699.95.
Direct download: CultCast_257_-_Apple_augments_reality.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 11:59pm PDT

This week:  we’ve canceled our MacBook Pro order! It’s true, and we’ll you why...  Plus: we compare new MacBook Pro’s performance to older models and similarly priced machines;  Apple call it quits on external displays;  and, the end of an era—one of Mac’s most iconic features gets retired.
 
This episode supported by
 
Casper’s American-made mattresses have just the right amount of memory foam and latex, and people everywhere love them.  Learn why and get $50 towards any mattress at Casper.com/cultcast.
 
CultCloth will keep your iPhone 7, Apple Watch, Mac and iPad sparkling clean, and for a limited time you can get 20% off your order with code JETBLACK 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
 
Professional Mac Users' Complaints List Grows After 'Disappointing' Apple Event
It seems like everyone’s pissed!
 
 
This week’s notes and links
  • Hiked prices really make you think about what you’re getting, especially compared to how much better it is to what you already have (or what’s available on the market).
  • Raw Power differences/Speed increases in new MBP (compared to 2012 model)
  • We specs aren’t everything as Apple optimizes everything.
  • Felix Schwarz on twitter
  • CPU
    • Only ~30% increase in Geekbench Single and MultiCore increases if buying the same speed processor you have no.
    • Skylake processors are already a year old, but Kaby lake isn't due out until January and Cannonlake due in 2017 as well.
  • GPU
    • You get 100-180% increase in GPU performance over 2012 dedicated GPUs
    • AMD Pro 400 series is used for low power consumption.  4 year old architecture.
      • it’s a mobile version of a budget graphics card
      • AMD claims "the thinnest graphics processor possible”
      • ideal for artists, designers, photographers, filmmakers, visualizers
    • Not on par with Nvidia GPUs
      • Nvidia’s budget card, GTX 1060, performs at 4.2 teraflops a second vs AMD Pro 460’s 1.8 Teraflops.  455’s 1.2 Tflops 450’s 1 Tflop.
  • Nickel and dimed
    • New cables or dongles for all your USB devices, your iPhone, your peripherals and Thunderbolt 2 devices, maybe your existing monitor.
    • No power brick extension cable.
    • Funny enough, Phil Schiller noted the new MacBook Pro still has a 3.5mm headphone jack because it is a "pro machine," but lacks an SD card reader because it's a "cumbersome" slot best left to adapters or wireless transfers. 
  • Take into account the $400-$500 price increases, it’s hard to get on board.
  • Next year’s upgrade will address a number of my concerns
    • Much newer Intel CPUs.
    • More availability of USB C and Thunderbolt 3 tech.
    • Lower prices.
    • Touch Bar bugs worked out (if any).
    • Cheaper SSD upgrades.
  • Again, specs aren’t everything.  Apple says the new MacBook Pro has:
    • 130% better 3D graphics performance.
    • 60% better gaming performance
    • 57% better video editing performance
 
Performance comparison of the 2012 and 2016 15” Retina MacBook Pro
 
MacBook Pro’s two biggest problems may get fixed in 2017
  • The KGI Securities analyst told investors in a recent note that he expects Apple will bring big price-cuts to the MacBook Pro along with some internal upgrades. Kuo also claims the 2017 update will finally give the MacBook Pro up to 32GB of RAM.
  • KabyLake CPUs will be used if Intel’s Cannonlake chips aren’t ready. That will keep max RAM support at 16GB for another year.
  • Price cuts on the next MacBook Pro won’t arrive until the second half of 2017 though.
 
 
Apple is officially done making displays
Buster
  • The days of Apple making its own stand-alone displays for the Mac Mini and Mac Pro are dead.
  • Apple revealed a new 5K 27-inch Thunderbolt 3 display during its “Hello Again” keynote yesterday, only instead of being made by Apple, the company partnered with LG to create the monito
  • The Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel tweeted that, after asking about it at the Hello Again event, was informed by Apple that “it’s out of the stand-alone display biz.”
  • Apple did add some tech to LG’s display so that it integrates better with Macs. You can adjust the brightness settings on the LG 5K UltraFine display from your Mac, rather than pushing buttons on the display itself.
  • $1300, or $700 for a 4K model
 
2016 MacBook Pro loses the iconic startup chime
  • The new MacBook Pro jettisons the iconic F-sharp sound Apple uses to show a Mac is booting up.
  • The use of an arpeggiated chord when you started your Mac dates back to the Macintosh II, when software engineer Mark Lentczner incorporated it into the system.
  • The sound was later revised by Jim Reekes, Apple’s senior software engineer in charge of the audio and system sounds, during the 1990s. Over the years, its tone has changed further and the instrumentation has also varied,
  • The reason for getting rid of the sound instead has to do with the fact that the new laptops now turn on from a fully switched-off mode if they’re opened — meaning you can save all that energy you would otherwise have expended pressing the power button.
  • There’s hope!  You can reactivate the sound via a terminal command.
 
Nvidia GTX 1060 Laptop vs Desktop Benchmarks – Is Pascal Really a Game Changer?
 
How to restore Mac startup chimes on 2016 MacBook Pro
 
How Faster are the Intel processor and Radeon Pro 450 / 455 / 460 GPU on the New MacBook Pro 15 2016?
 
Apple Has Received More Online Orders for New MacBook Pro Than Any Previous Generation
 
Direct download: CultCast_256_-_Why_we_re_canceling_our_MacBook_Pro_order.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 11:09pm PDT

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