For his girlfriend’s birthday, Alex and some of her friends all chipped in to get her a new MacBook Pro with Retina Display.
The finishing touch, though? The piece de resistance, as it were? A brilliant custom birthday card that apes the style of an official Apple product announcement.
That’s a hell of a gift, with a hell of a personal touch. Alex’s girlfriend better marry that guy.
With 60 episodes, over 1,000,000 downloads, and more appearances as an iTunes top tech podcast than we can count, we celebrate our first year anniversary on our newest episode of The CultCast! Join us as we remember our favorite episodes and guests, and tell the story of how CultCast almost never made it on the air.
But first, true to form, we discuss this week’s best Apple news and stories, including the new iOS features Sony is introducing into their just-announced Playstation 4; the honor Jony Ive just received that’s even better than a knighthood; and Woz says Apple is close to losing its cool—we disagree!
Get a fun weekly dose of all things Apple, subscribe to The CultCast now on iTunes, or easily stream new and previous episodes via Apple’s free Podcasts App.
Last Friday, the BBC published part of its interview with Jony Ive, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Industrial Design, which was shown during a special episode of children’s television show Blue Peter on Saturday morning. The full interview has now been posted to YouTube, and it shows Ive talking about product naming techniques.
Tim Cook just had the best week ever, ya’ll! On our newest CultCast, we’ll tell you what President Obama did during the State of The Union address that had Mr. Cook blushin’ like a school girl.
Then, the iWatch rumors are back, but this time, they may have some credence. We’ll tell you what we know. Plus, Cult of Mac Editor-in-Chief Leander Kahney tells us about his new Jony Ive book and we answer your Facebook queries in an all-new CultCastQNA.
Eager to listen but not sure how? Easy! Subscribe to The CultCast now on iTunes, or easily stream new and previous episodes via Apple’s free Podcasts App.
Show notes coming up next.
Jony Ive has received a whole host of awards for his design efforts at Apple, but as a life-long fan of children’s TV show Blue Peter, none of them may be as special as his latest from the BBC: a gold Blue Peter badge. Apple’s Senior Vice President of Industrial Design now joins a list of just 1,000 people awarded with a gold badge, which also includes David Beckham, JK Rowling, and the Queen.
Apple is on the hunt for two senior software engineers that will join its iLife development team to “re-imagine how user interfaces should be built and work.” Both positions, which were posted to the vacancies page of Apple’s website, are based at the company’s Cupertino headquarters, and indicate Apple is working to overhaul the iLife software suite, which consists of GarageBand, iMovie, and iPhoto.
Everybody wants to be Jony Ive’s friend, so he probably gets invited to a lot of the dinners where Silicon Valley’s elite just hangout, scarf down pizza, and get blitzed on wine. We rarely see pictures of such events, but last night a picture was posted of Sir Jony himself hanging out with 11 of the most powerful people in Silicon Valley.
The dinner was hosted by Nirav Tolia – a longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneur – and featured the CEOs of Twitter, Yelp, Path, Dropbox, Yahoo, and other companies. What’d they do besides eat pizza? Did a wild night of karaoke follow over at Marrisa Mayer’s manor? Who knows? Who cares? But we’re glad Jony gets to hangout with people outside the mothership from time to time.
Here’s a list of everyone that was present at the dinner:
Over the last few years we’ve seen all manner of Apple and iPhone shaped deserts, but this one takes the cake (zing!). It’s the most detailed iPhone cake we’ve ever seen, and it probably owes a lot of its beauty to the magic of fondant. It’s a cake even Jony Ive would be proud of. And the Happy Birthday reminder on the screen adds a perfect flourish.
A lot of companies have tried to imitate Apple’s trackpads because they kind of just melt into the rest of computer. They’re one of the most underrated features of the MacBook, but it’s going to be harder for companies to completely ripoff the feature now that Apple has a patent on it.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – The odds of Apple coming out with an iPhone with a 3D display is fairly negligible. Jony Ive’s not going to let it happen. But just because Cupertino doesn’t want to embrace 3D doesn’t mean you can’t watch 3D videos on your iPhone.
Thanks to a clever iPhone screen protector from Nanoveu, you can give your iPhone a 3D display for cheap. Plus, you don’t have to download any special apps or anything like that. Nanoveu’s lens will do all the work for you.
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