This week on The CultCast: Beautygate — what it is, and why it’s undoubtedly the dumbest “gate” in the history of iPhone! Plus: How have we liked our first week with Apple Watch 4 and iPhone XS? We reveal all. And the shockingly low production price of the iPhone XS Max proves Apple owes us more storage space!
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Episode
CultCast #355 – #Beautygate — the very serious iPhone XS flaw you need to know about …
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iPhone XS Max: A condensed review
iPhone XS selfie cam is so beautiful it spawned an ugly conspiracy theory
- The iPhone XS and its front-facing camera are supposed to help its owners make better self-portraits. However, some think their iPhone selfies look better than they should
- Lewis Hilsenteger, aka Unboxing Therapy on YouTube, is calling it “Beautygate.”
- Users are taking to internet forums like Reddit to question whether Apple added an undisclosed beauty filter to the front-facing camera on the iPhone XS and XS Max. Some are even posting side-by-side selfies taken with an XS and older handset to make a case that the newest iPhone has more than deeper pixels and an improved portrait mode going for it.
iPhone XS Max production cost is shockingly low
- Analysis firm TechInsights did a teardown of the an iPhone XS Max with 256GB of storage. That’s reportedly the most popular version of Apple’s best selling handset.
- As part of its teardown, TechInsights estimated the cost for each component. The total? $443
- Compared to the $1249 price tag for the product. So just 35 percent of the purchase price goes to pay for the actual hardware.
- Of course, the remaining $806 isn’t pure profit. The bill of materials (BoM) doesn’t cover Apple’s employee salaries, advertising, and other costs. Also, the BoM doesn’t include software, and iPhone and iPad sales have to cover the cost of developing iOS and its bundled software.
Erfon Elijah is the producer and host of The CultCast. When not editing podcasts or watching Mrs. Doubtfire, you’ll find him on Xbox Live hunting CoD Ghosts foes like the Predator. Here are his tweets…
