CultCast #375 - March Apple Event, incoming!

Feb 15, 2019

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This week: it's all but confirmed--Apple's holding a March media event to make some special announcements. We'll tell you what we know. Plus: Apple's all-time best-selling products may surprise you; and is it worth buying a 2018 MacBook Pro, or should you wait? We'll tell you what we think.

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On the show this week

@erfon / @lewiswallace / @lkahney

7 Painful Truths about the 2018 MacBook Pro

Hollywood stars tapped to attend Apple’s March event

Some of the biggest names in Hollywood are coming to Silicon Valley for Apple’s first big event of 2019.
Apple is rumored to be planning a late March keynote where a slew of new services will be unveiled. To help with its pitch to customers, Apple has asked some of the stars from its original TV shows to join the festivities.
Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Garner and director JJ Abrams have reportedly been invited by Apple to attend its March 25 event. All four of them have at least one project in development at Apple. Witherspoon’s production company actually had two shows picked up by the company.
Apple’s TV streaming service will reportedly offer original content for free. There are dozens of shows in various stages of development right now. The service will also sell subscriptions to other channels like Starz, Showtime and maybe even HBO.
Initially all of Apple’s content will be free, but they plan to launch a paid tier of content by this summer.
The March event will also see Apple unveil its news subscription service too. Publishers are reportedly still negotiating revenue split deals for that service. Apple was allegedly asking for a 50/50 split on revenues. Customers would pay $10 per month for unlimited access to articles from some of the biggest names in news.
With the event more than a month away there are still tons of details that could change.

AirPods are Apple’s second-fastest selling new product of all time

Apple’s AirPods are the company’s second best-selling new product of all time, a new report by Above Avalon analyst Neil Cybart suggests.
Cybart estimates that Apple is on track to sell 40 million pairs of AirPods in 2019. That represents almost 90 percent year-over-year growth.
“There are already at least 25 million people wearing AirPods. This total will likely exceed 50 million people later this year. These are massive sales and adoption figures for a two-year old product that has never received an update and rarely goes on sale for less than its $159 selling price.”