Send us a text!

This week: BeautyGate—what it is, and why it’s undoubtedly the dumbest “gate” in the history of iPhone.  Plus: how have we liked our one week with Apple Watch 4 and iPhone XS?  WE’LL TELL YOU.  And the shockingly low production price of the XS Max proves the deadbeats at Apple owe us more storage space!   This episode supported by   A business is only as strong as its people, and every hire matters… go to LinkedIn.com/cultcast and get a $50 credit toward your first job post.   CultCloth will keep your iPhone X, Apple Watch, Mac and iPad sparkling clean, and for a limited time use code CULTCAST at checkout to score a free CleanCloth with any order at CultCloth.co.   Thanks to Kevin McLeodfor the music you hear on today’s episode.   On the show this week @erfon / @lkahney / @lewiswallace /@bst3r   Imagine a place where you can slip into your silk robe, fez, and enjoy the company and fellowship of other CultCast listeners and tech enthusiasts.    A club, if you will.  A Cult Club. https://discord.gg/DbKApv   iPhone XS Max: A condensed review https://www.cultofmac.com/579035/iphone-xs-max-review-condensed/   iPhone XS Max is fast, fast, fast  

• Everything is very fast and responsive. Apps spring right open. Photos scroll without delay. Maps render without a hiccup. Everything is basically instantaneous, and it’s a joy.
• It’s all thanks to the A12 Bionic chip. Apple is so far ahead in mobile chips, it’s head-spinning. One benchmark shows the iPhone XS is faster than the new iMac Pro, a $5,000-plus pro workstation!

  It’s definitely not too big

• For such big phone, it doesn’t feel too big. Having used an X all last year, and liking it, I thought the Max would be too big. But it doesn’t feel as big as the old Plus iPhones used to
• iPhone XS Max camera

  The camera is excellent 

• Especially the new Portrait mode with advanced bokeh and Depth Control. The Max is less a phone, and more an advanced, near-DSLR camera with a cellular connection.

  The big screen is amazing

• The screen is so big and clear, there’s no need to take your laptop or iPad on flights any more. The Max will do nicely.

  It deserves to be caseless

• Despite dropping my old iPhone X numerous times, it has just a few scuffs and no cracked screen (it was, however, often in a case). But this time, because the Max is so thin, I’m going to try it caseless for a while. I’d like to enjoy Apple’s design for a change, without a bulky wrapping. (I know; I may regret this later.)

  iPhone XS selfie cam is so beautiful it spawned an ugly conspiracy theory https://www.cultofmac.com/579503/iphone-selfies-xs/

• The iPhone XS and its front-facing camera are supposed to help its owners m