The CultCast
This week: a look inside the new Steve Jobs Theater, a beautiful spectacle of technology and architecture, a physical manifestationof the Apple ethos, and a true and fitting monumen..  And like any Apple product, it packs some features that will delight you. Plus: why it will probably be damn near impossible to purchase an iPhone 8, and we’ll pitch you our favorite gadgets then vote on which is best in an all new Faves ’N Raves!
 
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Thanks to Kevin MacLeod at incompetech.com for the great music you hear on today's show.
 
On the show this week
 
Pre-Orders for iPhone 8 Likely to Start on September 15, Shipments on September 22
 
Drone flyover shows off a bustling Steve Jobs Theater
 
Steve Jobs Theater is as special as any other Apple product
  • On Tuesday, September 12th, according to Bloomberg, will unveil not only its latest batch of products, but also give us all a first glimpse of its brand new campus
  • The Steve Jobs Theater is as obsessively perfect as you’d expect a building named after Apple’s co-founder and former CEO should be.
  • The entrance to the venue sits underneath a silver disc, which which sits 20 feet in the air, supported by gigantic glass panels.
  • The auditorium itself occupies four underground stories, and to get there, journalists will descend a staircase spiraling down alongside the walls.
  • In order to gain access to the subterranean theater, attendees can either descend via a spiral staircase or using two custom elevators. These elevators rotate as they descend, so that passengers enter and exit through the same door, even though they do so from different directions.
  • The theater also sports a retracting wall, which opens to reveal a hidden product testing area.
  • Given the theater's 1,000-person capacity, one engineer said back in March that the building's budget meant each leather seat had cost Apple the equivalent of $14,000 apiece.
  • It’s a touching eponym, isn’t it?  Steve Jobs theater?  It will be a beautiful spectacle of technology and architecture, a true and fitting monument.  A metaphor for Steve Jobs, and a physical representation of the Apple ethos.
  • Steve Jobs was man that literally started with nothing, not even his biological parents, and went on to build one of the world’s most coveted companies.
  • It’s a uniquely American success story.
 
 
Analyst: Blame Samsung for iPhone 8’s high price tag
Apple’s upcoming premium iPhone is likely to be its most expensive model ever — and Samsung is partly to blame, according to a reliable Apple analyst.
  • In his latest research note, KGI Securities analyst Ming Chi-Kuo explains to investors that Samsung currently holds a practical monopoly on the supply of OLED displays. They’re the only ones capable of reliably mass producing the screens Apple needs, and thus seems to be inflating the price.
  • Apple previously paid between $45 and $55 for the screens on Plus-size iPhones. But Ming Chi Kuo claims Samsung is probably charging about $75 more for OLED displays. The final price for the displays likely costs Apple $120 to $130 per unit. That could explain why rumors predict the iPhone 8 (or iPhone Edition)
 
 
Our Faves N Raves Picks
Direct download: CultCast_300_-_Incredible_extravagance_of_the_Steve_Jobs_Theater.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 2:05am PST

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