Hot off the Apple event—it’s our iPhone 5s and 5c reactions on our all-new CultCast. We’ll take a look at what’s new in iOS 7 and each new iPhone, and we’ll walk step-by-step through all the powerful new tech Apple unveiled throughout their 60-minute keynote. No stone goes unturned…

Have a few laughs whilst getting caught up on each week’s finest Apple stories! Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let the unadulterated audio enjoyment begin. Show notes up next.

Earlier today, we told you about a new video from Microsoft that attempted to bash Apple’s latest iPhones. It was poorly done, not funny, and just genuinely awful. The clip was actually part of a seven-part group of videos that made fun of Apple employees(?) of some kind making ridiculous, cliche pitches for different features, like the 5s’s fingerprint reader, in a generic boardroom. Each video was posted under Microsoft’s official Windows Phone YouTube channel.

It only took a few short hours for Microsoft to realize that these videos were total duds, and they’ve all been taken down.

Why did these videos exist in the first place? We’ll probably never know. Someone at Microsoft thought they were a good idea, but a quick scan of the YouTube comments while the videos were live proved otherwise. The videos weren’t really put together like TV ads, so maybe Microsoft hoped they’d go viral? Better luck next time.

Source: YouTube

It’s hard to exaggerate the effect that stereo has on sound. Sure, it gives you different sounds from the left and right speakers, positioning the musical instruments or the on-screen action in 3-D space, but it also opens up the sound and makes it seem a lot bigger… Even when used with tiny speakers.

And while candy-bar all-in-one speakers like the Jambox pack in stereo speakers and stretch the soundstage using electronic trickery, it turns out that old-fashioned physical separation still works great. Which is why the otherwise average Earshots speakers are worth a listen.

Got yourself a pair of Beats headphones? I’m sorry to hear that, but I do have some good news: no, there’s not a magic fix to tame the over-boomy bass and bring balance back to the sound of your expensive cans, but there is an iPhone 5 case that’ll help you wrangle the red cord.

Actually, the Cordii Case will work with any sufficiently thick headphone cable, not just Dre’s overpriced junk.

If iPhone 5 chargers keep getting smaller at the same rate, soon the whole thing will fit inside the Lightning hole like some kind of USB-powered suppository. For now, though, you’ll have to settle for the still impressively small ChargeKey, a teeny tiny USB-to-Lightning adapter that – yes – hooks onto a keyring.

Organizing class work and keeping track of grades can be a pain. The aptly-named Grades app aims to be the ultimate tool for students in the App Store, and version 3.0 arrived today with a host of new features.

Grades 2 was good enough to receive an Apple Design Award, but updates have been so stagnant that the app is just now receiving support for the iPhone 5’s taller display. Today marks a huge leap forward for Grades, and there’s more to come with the impending launch of iOS 7.

Apple’s Touch ID fingerprint scanner has been welcomed as a “major step forward” by Biometrics expert Philip Smith, whose company pioneered the technology a decade ago.

“It’s a huge milestone in bringing fingerprint-based biometrics to the mainstream,” he said. “I’m thrilled to see this.”

Of course a biometrics would welcome an advance like this. But Touch ID has already set off a firestorm of controversy among privacy advocates who say there could be lots of Big Brother implications, especially following revelations by Der Spiegel Online that the N.S.A. already has the ability to capture photos, GPS data, contacts and texts from iPhones.

Have you ever thought about how a company like Apple manages to ship millions upon millions of unreleased devices around the world before a new product launch? Bloomberg has a great piece today detailing Apple’s extensive operations for getting new iPhones off the supply chain in Asia and shipped to customers on all corners of the globe.

A rumor surfaced right before Apple’s iPhone 5c/5s keynote yesterday saying that secret shipments of Apple TVs were arriving in the U.S. AllThingsD quickly squashed the report saying that Apple was not planning on unveiling new Apple TV hardware this month, and based off yesterday’s event, that certainly looks to be the case.

A big software update for the Apple TV will reportedly arrive on September 18th alongside the release of iOS 7. But that’s the only Apple TV news that has been on the horizon, until now.

https://youtu.be/oprUI6nupfc

Jimmy Kimmel has been well known to make fun of an Apple fanboy or two, so when Apple announced the new iPhone 5c and iPhone 5s yesterday, the late-night TV show host hit the streets to get people’s reactions to the new Apple device. The catch: the pedestrians were handed an iPad mini but were told it’s the new iPhone. Of course they bought it, hook, line, and sinker, and the results were hilarious as ever.