This week: it’s our list of the best—and most disappointing—Apple tech of 2018! And stay tuned for all our most favorite news, movies, food, gear, video games, and drug paraphernalia of the year. This one gets real weird...

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Thanks to Kevin McLeod for the music you hear on today’s episode.

On the show this week

@erfon / @bst3r

Ranking all the major hardware Apple released in 2018 [Year in Review] https://www.cultofmac.com/596754/ranking-2018-apple-hardware/

Our favorite What We’re Intos of 2018!

MoviePass

Annihilation

Super Mario Odyssey

Captain Jean-luc Picard will helm a new Star Trek series  

Boosted Board Mini X

Finger Bang

Pizza Dillas

Pack Rafts

This week: In December of 1994, Apple began allowing PC manufacturs to license their OS, building their own versions of the “Mac”, and it almost destroyed them. Leander Kahney was a young reporter on the scene in those days, and regales us with the tale.

Plus, we have a very special announcement we'd like to make, about a very special annoumcement we're going ot be making next week. And if you stay tuned, and you definitely should, we're going to wrap up with our favorite movies of 2018, and it’s a long list.

This episode supported by Opsgenie empowers Dev & Ops teams to plan for service disruptions and stay in control during incidents. It also gives teams the power to respond quickly and efficiently to unplanned issues. Visit Opsgenie.com to sign up to get a FREE company account and add up to 5 team members.

Easily create a beautiful website all by yourself, at Squarespace.com/cultcast. Use offer code CultCast at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

CultCloth will keep your iPhone X, Apple Watch, Mac and iPad sparkling clean, and for a limited time use code CULTCAST at checkout to score a free CleanCloth with any order at CultCloth.co. Thanks to Kevin McLeod for the music you hear on today’s episode.

On the show this week

@erfon / @lkahney / @lewiswallace / @bst3r

Apple Music Connect is shutting down, suffering Same Fate as iTunes Ping - lewis https://www.macrumors.com/2018/12/13/apple-music-connect-shutting-down/

• Apple today announced that its Apple Music Connect social platform for artists is in the process of shutting down, suffering the same fate as Ping, the company's previous social network for music removed from iTunes in October 2012.
• The only band that ever posted anything was ColdPlay.

Apple Sending Unsolicited Notifications for New Carpool Karaoke Episodes and Apple Music Echo Support -erfon https://www.macrumors.com/2018/12/18/apple-unsolicited-notifications/

• Apple has recently been sending out unsolicited notifications to iOS users, promoting Carpool Karaoke episodes and the availability of Apple Music on Amazon Echo devices.
• Apple doesn't appear to be sending these push notifications to all users, so it's not clear what criteria the company is using to determine who to send content to
• Why did Apple just send me a notification about an all new carpool karaoke, something I've never watched and have absolutely no interest in?

Today in Apple history: Apple signs ‘clone Mac’ deal https://www.cultofmac.com/458490/clone-mac-era-tiah/

• This week, in 1994: Apple Computer inks a licensing deal with Power Computing, allowing the company to produce Macintosh-compatible computers.
• With falling market share, and longtime rival Microsoft steaming ahead thanks to its software-licensing strategy, Apple executives think the only way to compete is for Apple to hand over its operating system for third-party Macs.
• The “clone Mac” era turned out to be a disaster for Apple. Rather than spurring Mac sales, it just meant cheaper “Macs.”
• As a result, Apple took a massive hit in the amount it earned per unit. Apple CFO Fred Anderson later worked out that the strategy actually cost the company money. The $50 fee Apple got for every clone Mac sold didn’t come close to recouping the money lost from people choosing to buy third-party Macs instead of more-expensive official ones.
• In order to get out of the deal and top the licensing, Apple ended up buying Power Computing’s entire Mac business for $100 million in 1997. Best movies of 2018! Buster Incredibles 2 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3606756 Sicario: Day of the Soldado https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5052474

BlacKkKlansman

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle 

Annihilation 

Avengers: Infinity War 

Black Panther 

A Quiet Place 

Hereditary 

The Ballad of Buster Scuggs

Missions: Impossible - Fallout 

Red Sparrow

This week: it’s all our favorite gadgets of 2018! Well, not all, but lots of them. We didn’t have time to get through them all but we tried real hard. Plus: Apple is finally gearing up to overhaul the AMD GPUs in their Mac lineup; and the legit way to purchase a base iMac Pro for just $3800.

This episode supported by

Opsgenie empowers Dev & Ops teams to plan for service disruptions and stay in control during incidents. It also gives teams the power to respond quickly and efficiently to unplanned issues. Visit Opsgenie.com to sign up to get a FREE company account and add up to 5 team members.

CultCloth will keep your iPhone X, Apple Watch, Mac and iPad sparkling clean, and for a limited time use code CULTCAST at checkout to score a free CleanCloth with any order at CultCloth.co.

Thanks to Kevin McLeod for the music you hear on today’s episode.

On the show this week:

@erfon / @lkahney / @lewiswallace

Mojave update hints at new AMD Vega GPUs coming to Mac https://www.cultofmac.com/595740/mojave-new-amd-vega-gpu-mac/

• Apple’s most recent macOS Mojave update suggests we’ll soon see new AMD Vega GPUs coming to the Mac.
• Apple just updated the GPUs in the Macbook Pro with Vega 16 and Vega 20 options, and now they look to be planning similar upgrades for other Macs in its lineup.

Sonos Beam Sonos

One Simply Safe security system

See Sense Icon 2 bike lights

Nintendo Switch

Cal Digit TS3 Plus Thunderbolt 3 dock

Apple Pencil 2

Apple Watch 4

"Refurbished" iMac Pro on eBay

• Apple has been running a reduced cost battery replacement program in response to customer complaints about battery gate, but this offer ends on December 31, 2018. After that, replacing an iPhone battery will cost you $49 for the iPhone 8 and older, or $69 for the iPhone X, iPhone XS family, and iPhone XR
• The price until Dec. 31st is just $29.

• Apple’s legal team could soon be headed to the U.S. Supreme Court to face an anti-trust case being levied against the company.
• U.S. Supreme Court justices heard an hour of arguments for an anti-trust lawsuit against Appletoday. The nine justices appeared to be open to letting the lawsuit move up to the highest court in the U.S. and it could bring huge changes to the App Store if Apple loses.
• Apple is being accused of breaking federal antitrust laws by monopolizing the way applications are installed on the iPhone. Plaintiffs in the lawsuit claim that Apple’s 30% cut on all sales in the App Store are causing consumers to overpay.
• Lead plaintiff Robert Pepper of Chicago argued that Apple’s App Store monopoly leads to inflated prices because developers have to account for Apple’s 30% fee. The plaintiffs want Apple to open up iOS so apps can be installed from sources other than the App Store.

• Pres. Trump  told the Wall Street Journal, that he’s prepared to put tariffs on all products being shipped from China that don’t already have them. And he’s also ready to raise the import fees on items already taxed from 10 percent to 25 percent.
• When the WSJ asked if that includes handsets like the iPhone as well as notebook computers, he said “Depends on what the rate is, I can make it 10%, and people could stand that very easily.”

• A company VP says the iPhone XR has outsold the iPhone XS series since the cheaper device came out last month.
• Greg Joswiak, Apple VP of iOS, iPad and iPhone Product Marketing, told CNET that the XR has “been our most popular iPhone each and every day since the day it became available.”
• The situation is quite similar to what happened a year ago, when analysts mistakenly believedthe iPhone X was a flop when it was actually Apple’s best selling handset.

• According to the Wall Street Journal, Apple has reduced its orders for both the iPhone XS and iPhone XR.
• Apple’s stock is not at $177 as of this writing, down from an October high of $232!  That’s a drop of almost 25%
• But it’s not just Apple stock that’s dropping, the DOW is also way down.
• Amazon is down 25% too.  $1500 down from $2000.

• In Max Yuryev’s tests, the new Vega 20 GPU was 25-35% faster than the 560X GPU in various benchmarks.
• We’re waiting for Final Cut Pro tests, but I get they’ll be even faster there.
• In Dave 2D’s premier render tests, the Vega 20 is almost twice as fast as the 560X

• How to get the best Black Friday deals most shoppers miss!
• The New MacBook Pro GPUs are a huge upgrade for a meager cost
• Erfon's quest to get Apple to upgrade his two-month-old MBP!
• We have to talk about iPhone XR.  Everyone thinks it’s failing but the only thing tanking is Apple’s stock.
• And we’ll wrap up with a Steve Jobs story so mundane, the internet is fascinated with it

• Apple’s done it.  A mere 4 months, almost to the day.
• The 15-inch MacBook Pro got a big performance boost this morning with the new option to add Radeon Pro Vega graphics to the top-of-the-line model.
• New Radeon Pro Vega graphics cards with up to 60% faster performance in GPU intensive tasks, like VIDEO EDITING, are now available as new options.
• The Vega 16 is only a $250 upgrade.
• Vega 20 is a $350 upgrade.
• Apple quietly mentioned the update after its October 30th event where it revealed the new MacBook Air and iPad Pro.
• A maxed out 15-inch MacBook Pro is a whopping $7,049
• I’m attempting to get Apple take back my machine and let me pay to upgrade to the new one.
• I think everyone who’s purchased a 2018 MBP should have the same option.

• Anyone going for any Black Friday deals?
• Mention Slick deals.
• My experience with Greentoe.

• Ming-Chi Kuo just lowered his estimates for the number of iPhone XR units that will sell over the next year. That’s a real turnaround, as this analyst had previously been bullish on Apple’s latest handset.
• Goldman sachs is also concerned  writing a note to investors saying “We are concerned that end demand for new iPhone models is deteriorating,”
• Kuo is worried the growing trade war between China and the US could affect sales.
• But he also says the price is still too high for a non-flagship phone.
• Galaxy S9 with 64GB is like $30 cheaper.
• 64GB Pixel 3 is $50 more expensive
• Whatever it is, Apple’s stock has TANKED.
• In the last 3 weeks, Apple’s stock has dropped $45 a share, from 232 to 187.
• That a drop of 19%!

• in 2016, someone on the website Quora asked a question about Steve Jobs, and the person who answered was someone he wasn’t expecting, and the mundane fact he shared is still being upvoted to this very day.
• The question: “What are some lesser-known facts about Steve Jobs?”
• Brett Bilbrey, who joined Apple in 2002 and retired in 2014 as its head of technology, responded.
• Steve Jobs, it turns out, used to wait in the lunch line just like everybody else.  
• Steve would somehow end up in line behind Brett Bilbrey on a regular occasion
• • "he would often ask me to hold his place while he went to check other food stations,” Bilbrey wrote. “Once when this happened, another employee got in line behind me, and I turned around and told him, ‘Just so you know, I’m saving that spot for Steve.’ He laughed and thought I was kidding. ‘Yeah, right. Like Steve is going to show up and cut in line.’ While he was saying that, Steve had returned and was behind him, and heard his comment. Steve said, ‘I’m not going to cut in, he was holding my spot for me.’ The guy turned around and saw Steve, and the employee’s face actually turned white, and he started shaking. Instead of just making room for Steve, he kind of just slinked away.
  • “Steve nodded to me and said ‘Thanks.’ Then he pulled out his phone and started checking email while we waited.”

• Everyone is drooling all over the new iPad Pro

• “Nothing is ever slow, and it always feels like there’s more headroom to work with. We were able to import several minutes of 4K footage into Adobe Premiere Rush, edit them, and export without breaking a sweat.”

• The new iPad Pro is “pretty much a laptop in terms of performance thanks to the new 7nm processor,”  “Side-by-side with an iPad Pro 10.5 we have noticed a considerable difference in app loading times, certainly on processor intense apps like iMovie, Affinity Photo, Procreate, and games like Fortnite or Asphalt 9: Legends.”

• “No apps or games I’ve used have been able to make the Pro break a sweat at all and benchmark numbers have been impressive,” adds Jeffrey van Camp of Wired. “By every measure I can think of, these are the best, most powerful, most capable iPads I’ve ever used.
• “It would be a total waste of $999 (or more) to use the iPad Pro 12.9 just for bingeing Netflix, but damn does this screen look good,”
• Wired also noted the new Liquid Retina screens are “gorgeous and packed with pixels.” “Color is vibrant and precise enough for Photoshopping and minute color tweaking if needed.”

• Nilay Patel on lack of storage support:  Like everything about the new iPad Pro, that USB-C connector is both remarkably powerful and incredibly frustrating,” writes Patel. “With one huge exception, most normal stuff you’d plug into a USB-C port works without fuss, and a bunch of other things work if you have an app that supports it … But one extremely important category of devices will definitely not work: iOS does not support external storage

• Just when I thought I’d seen it all, there is now a USB C hub that plugs right into the bottom of the iPad Pro
• Accessory-maker Hyper just unveiled a six-port USB-C hub for the new iPad Pro.
• 4K HDMI Port
• USB A Port
• SD and Micro SD card readers
• And an additional USB-C port so you can plug in an charge other USB C accessories

• “This laptop feels a lot nicer than the old MacBook Air,”  “It fits the same size screen in a smaller body, but it’s not as thin or as light as the thinnest and lightest of laptops you can get today. When the first Air came out, it amazed everybody. This one, though very well-built, does not stand out from the pack when it comes to size or weight.”
• “This new MacBook Air is faster than the old MacBook Air, but not by the kind of margin you’d expect after three years,”

• “I once bought and returned the smaller MacBook, because it comes with a less powerful processor that slugged when I had too many browser tabs and apps open. The MacBook Air doesn’t have that issue,” says Haselton.

• “I appreciate the speed, but I wish Apple included its Face ID technology above the screen instead,” says Haselton. “I’m used to it on my iPhone XS Max, and there seems to be plenty of room above the display to fit the cameras required. Touch ID feels outdated

• There’s one big thing reviewers don’t like about the MacBook Air’s new look, though, and that’s the lack of connectivity. Just like the MacBook and MacBook Pro, the new Air does away with MagSafe, USB-A ports, and an SD card reader and replaces them with just two USB-C ports.
• Battery life on the new Air is 9.5 hours, about an hour less than the old MacBook Air.
• Confusing
• • MacBook Air is slightly more powerful than the MacBook, but $100 less.  
  • MacBook is three quarters of a pound lighter than the MacBook Air.  
  • Both the MacBook and Air both get about 9.5 hours of battery life.  
  • The MacBook is thinner than the Air at it’s thickest point.

• Super sexy new design.
• Already sold out for 1-2 weeks!
• Thinner, and even smaller.  12.9” now the size of a sheet of paper.
• No headphone jack...
• Big performance increases, big price increases. Start price is now about 20% higher.
• • 11-inch models start at $799 (Wi-Fi) and $949 (Wi-Fi + Cellular), while 12.9-inch models start at $999
• iPad Pro comes with Apple's next-generation Neural Engine for advanced machine learning 
• This is the first gadget besides iPhone that will include FaceID.  
• Powered by the new A12X Bionic chip
• • A12X Bionic has eight cores (four performance cores and four efficiency cores) and per Apple provide up to 35 percent faster single-core performance. 
• Seven-core GPU to deliver up to twice the graphics performance.  They say it’s now as powerful as an Xbox One S console.
• USB-C connector is replacing the Lightning connector,
• • Allows iPad to charge your iphone
  • What can connect to the iPad?  USB Hubs?  Hard Drives?  Printers?  Even Apple said they weren’t sure when The Verge asked them.
  • Connect to external displays up to 5K… but why?
  • Still no file system.
  • No mouse support.
  • Apple is trying to position this as a laptop, but it’s not a laptop.
• Apple Pencil 2 gets magnetic connection and charging, better iOS integration, and a 30% higher price tag (now $130)
• BTW: Previous 10.5” iPad is still available, and still for the same 64GB base price of $649.  256 and 512 models are also still available.  

• Newest gen Amberlake 8th gen dual core CPU
• Complete overhaul
• Retina Display
• New 3rd get butterly keyboard
• TouchID
• Larger Force Touch track pad
• Made from 100% garbage
• Also gets a 20% increase in price for the base model with 128GB, now $1200.
• Previous model is still available for the same $1000 price tag.
• Maxed out model with 16GB of RAM and 1.5TB - $2600
• MacBook is now more expensive than the Air, starting at $1,299 and it has a slower processor, a smaller screen and it has fewer upgrade options.
• MBA now just $100 than the 13” MacBook Pro with faster processor and Intel Iris graphics.

• Full overhaul
• Space Gray finish
• HDMI 2.0
• two USB 3 ports
• four Thunderbolt 3 ports
• a headphone jack 
• and — for an extra $100 — a 10-gigabit ethernet port. With the Thunderbolt 3 ports
• A new cooling system doubles the airflow, allowing the machine to run at a maximum sustained power that is 70 percent higher than before
• According to Geekbench 4 scores, the base 4-core CPU has close to the same performance of the base 2017 5K iMac.
• $799 base model comes with 128GB of SSD, a  quad core 8th gen coffeecake i3 CPU with no turbo boost or hyper threading, and 8GB of ram.
• The maxed out with 64GB of RAM, 2TB SSD, and 6-core i7 CPU is a mere $4200.
• But the huge omission here is the Intel UHD Graphics 630.  There is no option to upgrade.

• Apple has screwed us, their loyal pro users.
• Just about 3 months ago, on July 12, 2018, Apple introduced refreshed MacBook Pro models aimed at professional users, with the long awaited 6-core Coffee lake processors, up to 32GB of RAM, and slightly better GPUs.  Apple positioned these as video editing dream machines.
• It had been years since a compeling MBP update, so people were excited and scooped them up when they went on sale.
• But the graphics cards on these new MBPs were only minor spec bumps. The 560X was just a spec bumped 560, which was itself only a spec bump’d 460.
• Fast forward to this week, Apple has announced they will be offering a massive upgrade option to the Radeon Pro Vega GPUs, the same ones offered in the iMac Pro.  These new graphics options offer up to 60 perfect faster graphics performance in video editing, 3D design, and rendering workloads…  you know, the exact things people are BUYING THIS FCKING MBP FOR.
• Clearly, Apple knew they were going to offer this upgrade, but they didn’t tell us.  
• Why?  Because they knew many of us might wait to buy, and they wanted our money.

• You may remember that people were complaining that the iPhone XS/MAX cam were making them look too good.  Ugly people everywhere were very offended and prefer to remain ugly in their photos.
• Issue was causing people to have “unnaturally” smooth skin times and reduces blemishes.  Sometimes it did look unatural, but that’s always what HDR has done.
• Nilay Patel spoke to Apple about the problem and here’s what they told him the issue was actually a bug
• • “iOS 12.1 will fix a bug in its Smart HDR camera system that resulted in smoother-looking photos taken by the front camera on the iPhone XS and XR,”
  • What causes the Beautygate issue, Patel explains, is the Smart HDR system choosing the wrong base frame for HDR processing when a selfie is snapped. Rather than choosing a frame with a short shutter speed to preserve detail, it is choosing a frame with a longer shutter speed.  “This should all be fixed in iOS 12.1, which will pick the sharpest base frame for the HDR merge when taking selfies,”

• The Eurasian Economic Competition database may have just confirmed more than one Mac will be unveiled at Apple’s upcoming more in the making hardware event
• The online database has been updated with three new filings for desktop computers running macOS 10.14. These most likely refer to rumored upgrades of the iMac, Mac mini, and the new lower cost MacBook Air replacement Ming Chi Kuo has been talking about for the last 6 months.

• The iPad mini hasn’t been updated since March 2017, but TFI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo told investors today that an iPad Mini is in the works, though he doesn’t think it’ll launch on Oct. 30th.
• He thinks AirPods could get updated during Q4 this year or during Q1 of next year, and claim AirPower could finally come out during the same period.

• If you haven’t already pre-ordered an iPhone XR, the only way to get one on its release date is to head to a nearby Apple Store and hope they have one in stock.
• Pre-orders are now shipping around Nov 7th.