Welcome to Cult of Mac’s new look.
We redesigned the site’s front page to better display the day’s most important stories, make it easier to find content, and to surface parts of the site that are sometimes not easy to find.
We hope you like the result.
Bye-bye, blog roll
For the last 10 years or so, Cult of Mac used the standard blog format, a reverse scroll of stories with the newest posts published at the top of the site.
It served us well, but we became frustrated that stories don’t remain on the front page for very long. Posts often scroll off the front door pretty quickly, often within a few hours (and sometimes even faster than that).
The standard blog format also makes it difficult to highlight the most important stories of the day. The new design, inspired by a classic newspaper layout, allows us to put the top story of the day at the top of the site. We can surround the top story with related posts or other important stories.
We will now be able to dedicate the whole of the top of the page to breaking news, or news devoted to a particular topic, like Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, making it easier for readers to follow a breaking story or event that’s dominating the day’s or the week’s news.
We also have several templates for highlighting different kinds of stories or events. For example, if there’s a really huge story, we have a template that will display only that one big story. It looks ace, and we’re excited to try it out.
Apple news, reviews, how-tos and more
If you scroll down the page, you’ll see different sections devoted to the main parts of the site — news, reviews and recommendations, and how-tos. We think it’s a big improvement to be able to see a selection of the latest reviews, for example, or the products we’re recommending.
Other sections showcase the latest videos posted to our YouTube channel, as well as our popular podcast, The CultCast, the latest killer deals and giveaways, and the current issue of our App Store magazine.
The new design also helps us to better showcase our one-stop-shop Apple Watch store and our well-reviewed buyback program, which helps readers trade in their old Apple gear for cash.
And finally, at the bottom of the page, you can sign up for our weekly news recap newsletter, The Weekender.
Thank you, thank you
I’d like to extend big thanks to San Francisco-based designer KC Bradshaw, who created the new look, and Marius Veltan of HipMill, who coded the design. Thanks also to the heroic efforts of our fantastic website hosts Presslabs and our advertising partner Ezoic. And thanks, as always to you — the loyal Cult of Mac reader.
We really like the new design and hope you do, too. We will continue to tweak the design in coming weeks, in the hope it serves us — and you — well for the next decade or so.
Oh, and if you don’t like it, there’s a link at the top of the site, just below the header, to revert back to the old design.
But trust me, it’ll grow on you!
Screenshot: Leander Kahney/Cult of Mac
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander is an expert on:
Apple and Apple history
Steve Jobs, Jony Ive, Tim Cook and Apple leadership
Apple community
iPhone and iOS
iPad and iPadOS
Mac and macOS
Apple Watch and watchOS
Apple TV and tvOS
AirPods
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
