This week: everything we like (and don’t) about AirPods; the insider way to lock down your own AirPods without waiting 6 weeks; Apple’s Mac division has a falling out with Jony Ive; and we remember the best of Apple, 2016.

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@erfon / @lewiswallace / “at” David Pierini

This week: an honest look at Mario Run; better-sounding AirPod alternatives; the cool new stuff in the iOS and tvOS updates; and we reveal the hands-down best tv shows of 2016!

@erfon / @lewiswallace / @lkahney

This week: why Apple is done chasing big hit products.  Plus: the demise of Pebble Watch is a bad omen for wearables; Foxconn secretly prepares to make more Apple products in the US; and we remember our favorite movies of 2016!

@erfon / @lewiswallace / @lkahney

• Apple Pay vice president Jennifer Bailey has announced that 35% of U.S. merchants now accept Apple Pay.

• According to Reuters, Apple manufacturer Foxconn is in the beginning stages of building a collection of assembly plants within the United States
• CNBC has alleged that Foxconn will be investing $7 billion into its U.S. expansion and aiming for the creation of 50,000 jobs
• After being outed by CNBC, Foxconn simply has states that more details will come after its finished talks with "the relevant U.S. officials”
• In a call made to Trump by Apple CEO Tim Cook, Trump mentioned told Tim that one of his goals would is be to "get Apple to build a big plant in the United States” 
• Foxconn does have manufacturing facilities on a very small scale in the U.S., in Virginia and Indiana, along with logistic locations in California and Texas
• Will Apple every had major manufacturing back in the US?

This week: why building a Hackintosh can get you the monster Mac you’ve always wanted.  Plus: Apple analyst Ming-Chi Quo reveals iPhone 8’s marquee feature; AirPods ship date is finally revealed; and stick around for our top Apple Airport router replacement picks!

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Build a beautiful, responsive website quick at Squarespace.com.  Enter offer code CultCast at checkout to get 10% off. Squarespace—Build it Beautiful.

• Apple revealed the earbuds alongside the iPhone 7, promising an October delivery date, but anxious customers have not been able to buy a set.
• In  email obtained by MacRumors, a customer asks Tim Cook where his AirPods are.
• • Customer’s comment: “Give us a release date. I really bought in to the wireless vision you painted….Let us know if it’s a month or 6 months, because then I’ll just buy some other wireless headphones.”
  • Tim Cook’s response: “Thanks for your note. Sorry for the delay—we are finalizing them and I anticipate we will begin to ship over the next few weeks.”

• Apple has big plans for the iPhone 8, claims KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.
• According to Kuo, Apple will be scaling up iPhone production 120-150 million units in the second half of 2017. If true, this would would be well above the 110-120 million units Apple ordered of its bestselling iPhone 6 generation handsets.
• Kuo claims this “unprecedented” demand will be centered around the myriad big improvements Apple has planned for its next-gen iPhone series.

• The rumored decision to adopt a glass chassis for the next-generation iPhone is reportedly fueled by a desire to improve wireless charging, another key feature supposedly coming to Apple’s 2017 phone.
• The report comes from notable Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who claims that all 2017-era iPhones will boast the long-awaited wireless charging tech.
• Earlier this year, a report from Bloomberg said Apple was working with partners to overcome current technical barriers with wireless technology, including loss of power over distance. If successful, innovation could make Apple’s version of wireless charging considerably more advanced than Samsung’s.

• An update to the official Netflix app lets you download TV shows and movies so you can view them without munching through your data allowance.
• “Not all titles are available for download,” according to Netflix. “If you have a particular title in mind, you can search for that title and look for the download icon.

• According to the more than 3,000 customers polled in J.D. Power’s 2016 Wireless Router Satisfaction Report released today, please love Apple’s routers more than any other.
• The top gripes were how often users had to reset their routers, general data speeds, and the difficulty of getting them set up.
• Apple was the only company to receive a 5-star Power Circle consumer rating, which places it "among the best" according to J.D. Power.

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

• 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.

• 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 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

• 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.

• 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.

This week: early reviews show new MacBook Pro is a video editing powerhouse; Apple’s 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?

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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.

• 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.

• “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.

• 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.

• Jonathan Morris pits a specs’d out HP Specter to a 13” MacBook Pro
• Premier takes 9+ minutes to export, Final Cut 1:20

Guest Blake J. Harris, author of Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Generation, regales us with the story of the 90s video game battle that pitted newcomer, Sega of America, against Nintendo, an unstoppable force, and maker of Mario Brothers, Duck Hunt, and the beloved Nintendo Entertainment System.