CultCast #263 - AirPods! The good, the bad, the amazing.

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

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Technology

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.

This episode supported by

 
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.

On the show this week

@erfon / @lewiswallace / “at” David Pierini

 

Mac division has ‘lost clout’ with Jony Ive and Apple design team
  • Apple’s Mac team has reportedly “lost clout” with the company’s industrial design group and software team, claims a new report
  • The picture painted by Mark Gurman as Bloomberg is a Mac division with a lack of clear direction from senior management, departures of key employees, and technical challenges — all conspiring to make the Mac one of Apple’s forgotten divisions.
  • The article notes that ever since last year’s reshuffle of Apple’s design team, meetings between the Mac team and the industrial design team have become less frequent.
  • It also notes more than a dozen engineers and managers working on the Mac have left over the past 18 months, with at least a sizable percentage put off by their lack of clarity about the “future of Mac hardware.”
  • One possible problem is the lack of a singular vision driving the division. Instead of having one concept to work on, increasingly engineers are — in the words of one source — “asked to develop multiple options in hopes that one of them will be shippable.” The result is that resources become more thinly spread than ever, while products ship later.
  • Mac generates about 10 percent of Apple sales
 
 
Don’t worry, Tim Cook says new iMacs are coming
  • The iMac didn’t get much love in 2016, but according to Apple CEO Tim Cook, killer new desktop Macs are coming.
  • In a note to Apple employees, Cook assured staff that desktop computers are still “really important” and that they shouldn’t worry about future machines.
  • “Some folks in the media have raised the question about whether we’re committed to desktops,” Cook wrote according to TechCrunch. “If there’s any doubt about that with our teams, let me be very clear: we have great desktops in our roadmap. Nobody should worry about that.”
 
The 10 best Apple ads of 2016