(You're reading all posts by Leander Kahney)
About Leander Kahney
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac, and author of three books about technology culture: Inside Steve’s Brain, the New York Times bestseller about Steve Jobs; Cult of Mac; and Cult of iPod. Leander has written for Wired, MacWeek, Scientific American, and The Guardian in London. Follow Leander on Twitter @lkahney and Facebook.(sorry, you need Javascript to see this e-mail address)
U.S. Air Force To Buy Up To 18,000 iPads
The U.S. Air Force has been awarded a $9.36 million to buy up to 18,000 iPads. They will be used for navigation and as digital flight manuals.
It’s one of the military’s largest orders of tablets.
Win An iPad 3 — Just Take Our Reader Survey
Want an iPad 3?
Tim Cook will be introducing it next week. Take our reader survey and you’ll be entered into a sweepstakes to win one.
We’ve grown a tremendous amount these last three years, from just a few thousand pageviews a month to more than 9 million in February — and that was a short month. We need a favor — some data about you, the readers, to help attract advertisers and sponsorship partners. This is crucial — our bandwidth costs are through the roof!
There’s more. We’d like to learn something about the state of the Apple ecosystem — what devices you are using and how. Do you use your iPad at work? What are you planning to buy this year? We’d also like to learn what you think of the site and what we could do better.
25 Billion Downloads: Apple’s App Store Hits Giant Milestone
Apple’s App Store just hit 25 billion app downloads. The countdown just clicked over at about 9.45PM PST. Apple has promised a $10,000 gift card to the person who downloaded the 25,000,000,000 billionth app. The winner will be notified shortly and revealed on the countdown’s web page.
The countdown began on February 17th and proceeded at an estimated rate of 49 million app downloads a day. It took the wildly popular App Store just four years to reach the 25 billion download mark. By contrast, it took eight-and-half years for 16 billion songs downloaded to be downloaded from the iTunes Store.
Here’s a video of Apple’s 25 billion countdown timer clicking over:
The Agony & Ecstasy Of Steve Jobs Goes Open Source
Playwright Mike Daisey has released the transcript of his influential monologue, The Agony And The Ecstasy Of Steve Jobs, under a royalty-free license.
The move will allow Daisey’s hit play about the conditions in Apple’s Chinese factories to be performed anywhere in the world without restriction.Indeed, Daisey claims that more than 500 groups and individuals in 13 countries have contacted him because they want to stage it.
“No one has done this before,” said Daisey in an email to Cult of Mac.com. “Theater doesn’t do a lot of things like this, and certainly not with a transcript that could have been sold — I had offers from two publishers — for real money.”
Daisey said there’s interest from three major theaters in Germany, a mid-size theater in Spain and two in France. There’s an actor who is planning to perform it in Kurdistan, a group in Nova Scotia that is adapting it, and a group in New York planning to turn it into a full-on play.
“There’s a lot,” says Daisey. “It’s going to be interesting.
Is Steve Jobs’s Biography An Inspiration To Entrepreneurs, Or A Warning?
Blogger Jason Kottke has noticed an interesting pattern: Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who take Steve Jobs’s biography not as a guide to success, but as a warning.
Kottke points to four entrepreneurs who are scaling back on work to focus on their families, lest they turn out like Steve Jobs.
Apple’s Factories Are “Sweatshops” — But They’re Better Than Competition, Says Labor Activist
Labor activist Qiang Li of China Labor Watch
Labor activist Qiang Li says Apple is doing a much better job of monitoring factory conditions than Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Nokia and many others.
“I compared Apple with other cell phone companies, such as Nokia. And the conditions in those factories are worse than the ones of Apple,” he said.
However, Li says that conditions in the supply chain are not the responsibility of the suppliers themselves or the Chinese government. Apple ultimately bears responsibility, and the company should spend some of its record profits in improving conditions.
As Apple Explodes In The Workplace, Introducing Our New Business Reporter
Cult of Mac's new business reporter, Ryan Faas, is the author of iPhone for Work, and a long-time contributor to publications like Computerworld.
For longtime Apple fans and new Mac and iOS users alike, this is a fascinating time to be living and working. Apple is becoming a fixture in every kind of workplace. It seems like every week there are stories of businesses investing in iPads or MacBooks, including the recent Forrester report that one in five people now use an Apple device on the job and 50% of companies issued Macs to at least some staff members. Not to mention the Checkpoint study that showed corporations preferring iOS over both Android and BlackBerry.
In other words, Apple, the iPad and iPhone are revolutionizing business, and Cult of Mac is joining that revolution. That’s why I take great pleasure in introducing Ryan Faas, Cult of Mac’s new business reporter. Ryan will be writing for the site full-time, covering the incredible march of Apple technology into the workplace. Ryan is a veteran tech journalist who has written extensively about Apple, business and enterprise IT, and the mobile industry. He’s contributed to Computerworld, InformIT and Peachpit Press.
Take A Peek At Upcoming Versions Of Abvio’s Full-Featured Running And Cycling Apps
SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD/IWORLD 2012 — As the App Store approaches its fourth birthday this July, some early apps are getting quite mature. With each update, more and more features get added.
Take for example a trio of apps from Abvio for running, walking and cycling. The company was previewing version 7 of their apps here at the show, and they have become very full-featured indeed.
Macworld Concludes With a Big Drum Circle
SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD/IWORLD 2012 — Here is some video of the big drum circle that wrapped up Macworld. Such a great way to end a conference!
Macworld is done, but we’ll have the remainder of our show posts tomorrow.
Bring-Your-Own-Mac Is Fueling Big Gains For This Enterprise Software Company
Mike Evangelist, chief marketing officer for Code 42 Software, says companies are finally embracing the consumerization of IT.
SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD/IWORLD 2012 — Here’s a story we’re hearing a lot at MacWorld: the business world is finally starting to embrace the consumerization of IT.
Take Code 42 Software, which has seen a lot of growth from its enterprise customers recently. According to Code 42, corporations have given up fighting employees who bring their Mac to work, and are now supporting them instead.
“Companies are realizing they can’t fight the tide anymore,” said Mike Evangelist, chief marketing officer. “People like their Macs better and they’re taking them to work. Companies are reacting to that.”
