CultCast #360 - Our More in the Making hardware reactions!

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

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Technology

This week: Apple’s More in the Making hardware keynote was an action-packed ride stuffed with one hardware update after another!  We’ll tell you what we like (and what we don’t) about Apple’s newest product updates.  Plus: Apple quietly offers a big screw you to 2018 MacBook Pro owners… prepare for a rant.
 
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Thanks to Kevin McLeodfor the music you hear on today’s episode.
 
On the show this week
 
Everything you need to know about Apple’s Q4 2018 earnings call
 
USB-C for iPad Pro: Everything you need to know
 
All the ways the 2018 iPad Pro blows away its predecessors
 
iPad Pro
  • 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.  
 
 
Macbook Air - a confusing product
  • 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.
 
Mac Mini
  • 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.
 
 
MacBook Pro 
 
New MacBook Pros with updated graphics are coming next month
  • 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.
 
5 things we didn’t get at Apple’s ‘More in the Making’ event