The CultCast CultCast #263 - AirPods! The good, the bad, the amazing.
Dec 23, 2016
01:09:46
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.