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 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.
47 responses to “Hack Turns iPad 3G Into a Fully Functional Phone!”
Video is very crappy at some important moments and it looks like that the person wants to hide some esential parts.. definitive – FAKE
i saw the same out of focus and wondered if it was real or if it was just hacked so the apps would come up but they actually do nothing. or if the whole thing was a carefully created video and someone off screen was calling the two iphones.
I just use isip phone and attach to my VoIP account from Kiwilink. Perfect for calls if my iPhone is out of juice.
Why is this a big deal, even if it is true? I’ve been using TextFree with Voice on my iPad for months as my only phone (no land line, no cell phone). Free incoming calls (yes, it rings), free texting, outgoing calls are only 2¢ a minute (versus around 11¢ a minute for the 450 minutes for $40 plans). The only thing that would make it better is if there was a 3G iPod Touch to use it on instead. My total wireless bill is $29.99 a month for unlimited data. No hacks, no jailbreaking, no catches, just a free app.
when I here this I just picture some guy walking down the street with an iPad up to his ear and it makes me giggle.
I’ve been using Engin’s iPhone VoIP app on my 3G iPad since I bought it, and it’s a pretty good phone. With the earphones/microphone plugged in, and the iPad in by backpack, I’m not sure I need a mobile phone!
This is incredibly good, but the thought of me seeing by friends using iPad for calling seems super funny, so an earphone would be better, but still it’s great because it does not only saves money but less heavy as well because bringing an iphone is no longer necessary.
http://jinibot.com/ipad-develo…
At precisely what point do you consider the video to have been in focus? :-)
From a feasibility point of view, I don’t see why not. I’m sure the iOS software is identical across the iPad and iPhone, they just disable a few apps here and there. From a hardware point of view the iPad 3G isn’t far removed from being a large iPhone anyway… it’s got the 3G chip, SIM card, speaker and microphone.
The big question is why? The only answer I can come up with is “because they can”. Austin Schoepflin is quite right. Has anyone seen Dom Jolly’s phone sketches on Trigger Happy TV? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v… Could quite easily have been this iPad…
Yeah thats all well and good for those of u who have a credit card, but those who don’t will need to hack iPad. I’ll get mine jail broken if the hack is real.
In the US isn’t the iPad like 30 bucks for a 5 gigs of data and then the App TextFree uses ur credit card to charge for calls, Like hiw Skype Calls to phones will cost ya, yeah ?
This news is ORGASMIC , if this is real, I don’t need to save up for a new iPhone or android woooohoooo. Must dash, I got me sum Jailbreakin’ to do :)
If this does happen, the iPad phone, I would totally go into a shop or Collage and answer my ipad like a phone LOL.
It’s EPIC
Now I can have a tablet phone without buying a crappy galaxy tab :)
That will be me LOL :)
I don’t know if this is legit or not but one thing I can say is I live in Canada on the Bell network and when I first set it up they assigned my iPad a phone number which they said I needed to give whenever there was an issue. So I guess an app like this might work in some places, but for me my iPad only has data on its sim card so I don’t know about that one,
I always wondered why Apple wouldn’t let the iPad 3G do cell calls like any other tablet with a cellular data module.
It will be more like me using my bluetooth noise cancelling headphones with a mic to call people on the go. Should be nice if this actually works.
I have the original iPad unlimited data plan. The new plan is $25 for 5gb (it pays to be an early adopter!). I actually haven’t used outgoing minutes so far. If I need to talk to someone, I text them and ask them to call me. I use skype to call 800 numbers…that’s free. At home I use Gmail/GoogleVoice on my computer to make outgoing calls..also free. Most people text or email anyway, so not having a credit card doesn’t have to be an issue. You don’t need one to set it up.
Is this hack saying that all text and calls would be free? How do you pay for your iPad data plan without a credit card?
i think its real because iphoneislam said the same before releasing faceit-3gs and they do work on some random things :S
You do NOT need to jailbreak to do something like this. Skype provides the same functionality if you have a plan with them, which are super cheap. They start at 3 dollars a month, I think. I actually have used this functionality with Skype, but it’s much easier to just use a phone.
It goes out of focus because this guy either doesn’t know how to use his camera or he has it on autofocus – which doesn’t work very well when things at different focus points are moving in and out of the camera.
Sex offender busted leaving the Apple Store after using display computer to get onto Facebook
http://www.gadgets5.com/2011/0…
wasnt this just a case of taking the ipod hack and placing it on the ipad
This is great.
But you will still look like a dumbass with an iPad next to your ear