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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.

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On the show this week

@erfon / @lewiswallace / “at” David Pierini

 

Mac division has ‘lost clout’ with Jony Ive and Apple design team http://www.cultofmac.com/459078/mac-division-has-lost-clout-with-jony-ive-and-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 http://www.cultofmac.com/459110/dont-worry-tim-cook-says-new-imacs-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.