podcasts - page 5

On this week’s Apple Chat (the podcast formerly known as Kahney’s Korner): I talk with former Apple product design engineer Anna-Katrina Shedletsky about her take on modern manufacturing and how AI will revolutionize factories. She introduces us to her new company, Instrumental, which is using machine learning to help manufacturers identify and fix problems on their assembly lines.

Using her hard-earned experience at Apple overseeing the production of the first Apple Watch and several generations of the iPod, Shedletsky says machine learning is coming fast to manufacturing. Amazingly, almost all consumer electronics products are still assembled by hand — including hundreds of millions of iPhones.

But that’s changing. Manufacturing is undergoing a huge sea change with the advance of robotics and AI.

This week on The CultCast: Apple stores are about to get a massive 2.0 overhaul, and we’ve got all the details. Plus: Why the iPhone 8 may launch super-late and with no OLED screen; Final Cut Pro X hits a massive milestone; Google co-founder makes a flying car, and you’re gonna want one; and we reveal our favorite new gadgets in an all-new Under Review!

Our thanks to Blue Apron for supporting this episode. Blue Apron makes it easy to cook delicious meals at home. See their upcoming menu and get your first three meals free at BlueApron.com/CultCast.

Superior iOS podcast app Overcast has issued a new 3.1 update, allowing users to send individual podcasts to their Apple Watch to listen to when they’re not in the immediate vicinity of their iPhone.

This is something that can’t be done with Apple’s official Podcasts app, even though users can send audio files from the iOS Music app.

The iTunes brand is being slowly carted off to the Apple graveyard.

On Thursday morning, Apple made a very subtle but profound change to the way it markets podcasts. From now on, they’re no longer called “iTunes Podcasts” — they’re called “Apple Podcasts.”

Three new beta software updates have been seeded to developers by Apple today, adding a bunch of bug fixes and performance improvements to Apple’s platforms.

The new builds come one day after Apple seeded a new build of macOS 10.12.4 to developers. The fifth beta builds of iOS 10.3, tvOS 10.2 and watchOS 3.2 can be downloaded by registered developers directly from the Apple’s dev portal.

Cult of Mac’s podcast The CultCast hit its five-year anniversary this week, and to celebrate we want to hang out with you!

We’ll be hosting a live 5th anniversary extravaganza this afternoon, celebrating all the amazing listeners we’ve grown to love during this crazy experience. Erfon, Leander, Buster and maybe even some special guests will be part of the live event. The festivities start at 12 p.m. Pacific today. All you have to do is watch the live YouTube feed below.

Come join the party!

This week on The CultCast: It’s been five years of CultCasts! We’ll regale you with some of our favorite stories from past shows. Plus: Our hardware expectations from Apple’s rumored March event; why iPhone 8’s wireless charging will probably be lame; Apple has five teams working on next-generation charging tech; why iPhone 8’s camera could pump out industrial-grade slow motion; and Steve Jobs gets a beautiful new home on Apple’s new spaceship campus.

Our thanks to Squarespace for supporting this episode. It’s simple to accept Apple Pay and sell your wares with your very own Squarespace.com website. Enter offer code “CultCast” at checkout to get 10 percent off any hosting plan.

The second beta of iOS 10.3 is now available for download. Apple seeded the new software update to developers this morning, alongside watchOS 3.2 beta 2 and tvOS 10.2 beta 2.

All three updates contain under-the-hood improvements as well as new features, including Theater Mode for Apple Watch, Find My AirPods and some UI tweaks for Apple TV.

Apple gave developers their first look at the next big update for iOS 10 yesterday, and it packs a surprising number of new features.

The public will have to wait a few weeks (or months) to get their hands on the new goodies packed inside iOS 10.3, which brings improvements for AirPods, iPads and more.

Here are all the new additions coming soon to iOS devices near you.

This week on The CultCast: Is a secret Apple project stalling Mac updates? It wouldn’t be the first time. Plus: Apple teases Black Friday deals; AirPort routers are walking dead, and the Mac Pro might be next; the future of Time Machine; why iPad should be an iOS/OS X hybrid; and Jony Ive’s new role designing Apple itself.

In the last decade or so, lots of companies have gotten design religion. Design has been brought in-house, where it can shape products from the very get-go. There’s an obvious source for this idea — Apple.

This week on the Kahney’s Korner podcast, I talked to Oliver Seil, senior design director of Belkin International’s Innovation Design Group. We discussed Belkin’s products and design process; the surprising complexity of USB cables (and why they cost so much); and why Apple has had such an enormous influence on design and manufacturing.

You can listen to the podcast or read a full transcript of the interview below. (Or dive into the show notes.)

The tech industry appears to be nice and clean, but it has a long and toxic history of environmental damage. Silicon Valley is home to the most Superfund cleanup sites in the country.

A new film, Death by Design, takes a sobering look at the electronics industry and its toxic environmental legacy — both in the United States and in China. The film offers a behind-the-scenes look at the cost of the devices we consume in some measure of ignorance.

Apple features heavily in the film, though it’s not the only tech company implicated.

This week on Kahney’s Korner, I talk to the documentary’s director, Sue Wiliams, about Apple, pollution and Silicon Valley.

For many ugly years, manufacturers considered industrial design an afterthought. They would outsource the task to a contractor or neglect it altogether, in an effort to get products out quickly and cheaply.

The result: hideous-looking products that didn’t work well or proved difficult to use.

Nowadays, companies like Apple are changing the game when it comes to incorporating industrial design and user experience into product engineering.

On this episode of Kahney’s Korner, I talk with Oliver Seil, senior design director with Belkin International’s Innovation and Design Group. Seil is Belkin’s Jony Ive, the top designer who overseas the company’s diverse array of products.

Belkin specializes in mobile accessories, from power packs and iPhone cases to WeMo home automation products

In the early ’90s, Pixar was in the middle of creating its first movie, Toy Story, but the company was in disarray. It was bleeding cash and floundering around looking for a business model.

To help turn it around, Steve Jobs hired Lawrence Levy, a former corporate lawyer, to help figure out how to make Pixar a real business.

In this week’s episode of Kahney’s Korner, I talk to Levy about how exactly he and Jobs made Pixar into one of the most successful movie studios in history.

It’s true: music can put you in the mood for love. A Spotify survey found that music is more arousing than touch. That’s why OhMiBod’s iPhone-connected sex toys make sense; they enhance the mood as well as buzzing in time to the beat.

“Our massagers offer an unrivaled sensory experience that allows singles and couples to not only hear their favorite music, but feel it as well,” says the firm’s website.

In this week’s episode of Kahney’s Korner, I talk to Suki Dunham, cofounder of OhMiBod, a female-owned and operated company that makes a line of iPhone and iPad controlled female pleasure products.

Suki used to work at Apple, where she learned a lot about product design, packaging and marketing, which she applies to her business selling high-tech vibrators.

iFixit’s iPhone 7 teardown involved 30 people in three countries, an X-ray machine and lots of sleepless nights. Thanks to iFixit’s hard work, iPhone teardowns have become a tech-culture phenomenon. Millions of fans eagerly await details of the internal components of Apple’s latest devices.

A lot of this has to do with Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit, the second-biggest supplier of Apple parts after Apple itself, and publisher of the huge and amazing iFixit repair wiki.

In this week’s episode of Kahney’s Korner, I talk with Wiens about all the work that goes into making the iFixit teardowns for a massive global audience, and the hardware secrets of the iPhone 7.

ZCast, the app that makes it possible to create and publish your own podcasts using nothing more than your iPhone, just got even greater. The version 2.0 update adds a bunch of big features that will make your podcasts even more appealing.

This week The CultCast: What new hardware will Apple bestow upon us at next week’s iPhone 7 event? Don’t miss our predictions! Plus: New video shows iPhone 7 Plus in the wild, and we explain Apple’s Irish tax woes (then argue about the situation).

Our thanks to Squarespace for supporting this episode. It’s simple to build a website that looks beautiful on any device that visits at Squarespace.com. Enter offer code CultCast at checkout to get 10% off.

This week on The CultCast: You’ve heard of Samsung’s Galaxy Edge … but is an iPhone 8 Plus Edge on the way? Some respected analysts say yes. Plus: iPhone 7 Plus with dual lens was just spotted on the streets; iOS 9.3.5 fixes one of the most invasive iOS exploits to date; Tim Cook just made fat stacks of cash; and, if the rumors prove true, Apple is working on a new social network … to take on Snapchat. No, seriously.

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Apple has opened up Siri to third-party developers, which means we’ll soon be able to do a bunch of things — like ordering pizza or sending money — simply by speaking to Apple’s intelligent assistant.

It’s a big change, and another step toward a friction-free future in which we will talk to our devices instead of poking at them with our fingers.

In this week’s episode of Kahney’s Korner, I talk with Adam Fingerman and Paulo Michels of ArcTouch, a mobile development company that works with big media companies like ABC, NBC and CBS. As they’ve explored the Siri API, they’ve gained insight into what we can expect when iOS 10 and macOS Sierra get released to the public this fall.

The old adage is that new cars depreciate the minute you buy them. However, the rumored Apple car might be the first vehicle to actually make you money after you drive it off the lot.

If Apple’s car is autonomous, it’ll earn its keep delivering people or goods when you’re not using it. So says Paul Godsmark, a robocar consultant and one of the leading experts on the upcoming autonomous vehicle revolution.

In this fascinating interview, Godsmark talks about the enormous changes that are coming up fast with self-driving vehicles, including Project Titan, the rumored Apple Car.

Buckle up! Everything is about to change dramatically — from the way we travel to the way we work.

The market for iPhone cases is worth billions of dollars. The first manufacturer with a case that fits a new device — say, the iPhone 7 — can make a killing in the days following an Apple launch.

For this week’s episode of Kahney’s Korner, I talked with industry veteran Tim Hickman, CEO of Gumdrop Cases. Over the years, he’s tried all kinds of tricks and strategies in the race to be first to market with new iPhone cases — including making thousands of cases that turned out to be wrong.

This time around, Hickman has received several CAD files from mysterious sources in China that supposedly show the exact dimensions of the upcoming iPhone 7. Will he bet his company’s fortunes on these files of dubious origin? Let’s find out.

Ken Segall is a former Apple ad man who worked closely with Steve Jobs for more than a dozen years. Segall is the guy who put the “i” in iMac and worked on the famous “Think Different” campaign.

The big lesson he learned from Steve Jobs was keeping things simple. But easier said than done. How exactly do you keep things simple?

Segall went out and found 40 business folks who keep things straightforward. His new book based on those interviews is called Think Simple:How Smart Leaders Defeat Complexity.

In a new podcast, Kahney’s Korner, Segall talks about some of those lessons, how Steve Jobs kept things uncomplicated and about how Apple is doing these days without him.

This episode of Kahney’s Korner is supported by TunnelBear, an award-winning service that gives you fast and private access to the internet.

This week on The CultCast: MacBook Pro spy photos reveal some juicy new features, but some old favorites go bye-bye. Plus: Apple may finally update its ancient Thunderbolt display; why moving iPhone to a three-year update cycle would suck; and stay tuned for more weird and wacky super-fan stories from The Cult of Mac.

Our thanks to Squarespace for supporting this episode. It’s simple to build a website that looks beautiful on any device that visits at Squarespace.com. Enter offer code CultCast at checkout to get 10 percent off.

Using iTunes just got slightly less crappy.

Apple has pushed out iTunes 12.4 to the public bringing some minor design tweaks that makes Apple’s most contorted and bloated app ever a little bit easier to navigate.

Oh, and it might not destroy your music library anymore either.