CultCast #347 - i9 MacBook Pro - a total ripoff?

This week:  Is the i9 MacBook Pro a total ripoff?  One YouTube reviewer says yes, and his tests are convincing.  We’ll fill you in.  Plus: the journey to a trillion!  How did Apple become the most valuable company on earth?  We discuss, and remember the company's troubled history. And stay tuned for the sad decline of MoviePass.  Is the troubled movie service still worth it?   This episode supported by   Easily create a website by yourself, at Squarespace.com/cultcast. Use offer code CultCast at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.   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   i9 Macbook Pro - Apple's biggest RIPOFF! - erfon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSvfEhdNT4s&frags=pl%2Cwn

• YouTuber Max Yuryev pitted the 2.2Ghz and 2.6Ghz i7 MacBook Pros against the the 2.9GHz i9, and the results aren’t great.  These are the tests I’ve been waiting for.
• in his Cinebench test, he found the i9 beat the i7 by only 2 percent, averaging only 3.15Ghz, while both the 2.2Ghz and 2.6Ghz i7’s both averaged 3.05 Ghz.
• And in test after test, he showed that the i9 rarely performs better than the 2.6Ghz i7.
• Why?  It seems like it comes down to heat.  Even with the patch, the MBP struggles to keep the i9 cool enough to keep it in turbo mode, and sometimes it’s even not cool enough to run at base clock.
• For example: In his Red Raven 4.5K Raw rendering test, he noticed that the 2.2Ghz i7 ran about 500Mhz over base clock speed, the 2.7 ran about 200Mhz over base, and the 2.9 ran about 500Mhz below base clock.
• He noted that the GPU and CPU use the same cooler, so if you’re pushing the GPU, like many rendering apps do, the CPU won’t be cooled as well, so can end up throttling more than you’d want.
• So what does all these mean?  
• • It doesn’t seem to make sense to pay extra for the i9.  It matches or barely beats the 2.6Ghz in many tests, and sometimes can’t even beat the 2.2Ghz i7.
  • A better value, and bigger a bottle neck in the 2018 MBP isn’t the CPU, it’s the GPU.
  • The base MBP comes with a 555X Radeon GPU, whereas the premium 2.7Ghz i7 and 2.9Ghz i9 models come with a Radeon 560X, and that’s what made the biggest difference in his tests.
  • My thoughts, go with the 2.7Ghz i7, the 560X GPU, and use the i9 money you save for extra SSD space.

    The biggest takeaways from Apple’s dominant Q3 earnings results https://www.cultofmac.com/566691/the-biggest-takeaways-from-apples-dominant-q3-earnings-results/

• Apple beat Wall Street’s expectations today with its Q3 2018 earnings report, shooting its stock price just below the $204 price needed to mint it as the world’s first TRILLION dollar company. 
• iPhone sales were up slightly year-over-year. Revenue was up big time. The ASP (average selling price) was also up big time. Even Apple’s EPS (earnings per share) was higher than some of the biggest Apple believers expected.
• When the iPhone X launched last year it was panned as too expensive by far too many critics, but Phone revenue was up 20% YOY.
• Wearable sales are up 60% year-over-year
• AirPods and Beats are also selling well. Combined with Apple Watch they’ve generated more than $10 billion in revenue in just the last year.
• TimCook also commented on Apple’s TV deal with Oprah, saying he “couldn’t be happier” that she’s on board.
• He also said there’d be “dramatic changes speeding up in the content industry,” and went on to say “We’re really happy to be working on something. We’re just not ready to talk about it in-depth today.”
• Apple sold only 3.72 Macs in its third quarter, less than any single quart since it’s Q3 of 2010.  This may be because it’s entire Mac line was ancient until just weeks ago, in Q4, when MBP was updated.
• iPhone and iPad now make up 65% of Apple’s yearly revenue.

  The sad decline of MoviePass. Is it still worth it? https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/31/movies/moviepass-timeline.html https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/31/17634508/moviepass-price-increase-limited-first-run-movie-access

• It was a year ago, in august of 2017, that MoviePass dropped their price to $9.95 a month. In the following two days, more than 150,000 new users signed up, crashing their website and app.
• Though AMC said MoviePass’s model could never work, they essentially created their own version of the service to compete. It’s $20 a month and their service includes digital reservations, iMax and 3D, and let’s you see the same movie more than once.
• Sinemia is another competitor that’s popped up.  They offer a 2 movie a month plan for $10 a month that works with any theater, offers advanced ticket options, and works on 3D movies, IMAX, 4DX, and more.