CultCast #238 - Gruber & Gruber

The CultCast - A podcast by America's favorite Apple Podcast - Fridays

Categories:

Technology

This week: You’ll laugh, you’ll cry—wait till you hear the latest lawsuit aimed right at Apple’s biggest products.  Plus: leaked photos of EarPods with a lightning connector look better than expected; why we may never get 3rd party Apple Watch faces; Netflix adding a feature they swore would never happen; and a man builds a vibrant photography career in the world of sports with nothing but his iPhone. Oh, and Val Kilmer dances with a carrot in his derriere.  Just hit play already.
 
This episode supported by
 
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Let’s face it, CultCloth isn’t for everyone.  But if you’re obsessive about keeping your iPhone, iPad, Mac, DSLR, glasses, and other gadgets in sparkling clean condition, you’ll love ‘em.  Check them out now at CultCloth.co, and use code “CultCast” at checkout to score a free 8x8 CleanCloth!
 
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
 
Intro - Young Bill Gates, thoughts on the Macintosh
 
Netflix to add offline viewing by the end of 2016
  • Netflix is working to bring offline viewing to its smartphone and tablet apps by the end of 2016, according to sources familiar with its plans.
  • Netflix rival Amazon Prime Instant Video added this functionality last September
  • Now industry insider and Penthera COO Dan Taitz promises that “download-to-go” will be available by the end of the year.
  • Penthera specializes in providing video downloading technology to customers like Comcast, Charter Communications, and more.
John Gruber: Don't Ever Expect Third Party Watch Faces on Apple Watch
  • [Apple] they do fancy themselves to be a real watch company. And as a real watch company everything you’re going to see is going to be San Fransisco. Now they could enforce that for third-parties possibly.
  • Any analog dial is going to use those Apple-styled hands. The capsule-shaped hands. And watch  companies typically have things like that. For example, the hands on a Rolex are instantly recognizable. In the dials are unmistakably Rolex-styled dials.  And Apple fancies itself as a high end watch company.
 
Gaze upon iPhone 7’s Lightning EarPods in all their glory
  • New photos of what are claimed to be Apple’s next-generation EarPods all but confirm that its iPhone 7 series will ship without the beloved headphone jack.
  • The new EarPods, which surfaced on Chinese micro-blogging website Weibo, swap the 3.5mm jack we’ve been using for decades for a Lightning connector.

 
Apple sued by man who claims he invented iPhone in 1992
  • A Florida man is suing Apple for a whopping $10 billion and 1.5 percent of all future Apple earnings — because he claims to have come up with the idea for Apple’s breakthrough mobile device all way back in 1992.
  • Thomas S. Ross’ “electronic reading device” patent describes a “device so designed and aggregated as to have created a novel combination of media and communication tools,”
  • He claims this idea (allegedly) to have been “hijacked and exploited by Apple’s iPhones, iPods, iPads and others.”
  • The suit finally argues that the distress Ross has suffered as a result of seeing his iPhone everywhere without the proper credit being bestowed on him adds up to a “great and irreparable injury that cannot fully be compensated or measured in money.”
  • In the meantime, though, he’s happy to take $10 billion — plus the barely-significant sum of 1.5 percent of all future Apple earnings. It’s only right, isn’t it?
 
Meet the sports shooter who leaves heavy gear behind for an iPhone
 
Erfon mentioned these Sony XBA-H1 earphones!