Leander Kahney - page 15

In the quiet foothills of Kentucky, a massive supercomputer is churning through data. It is hunting for new drugs to fight cancer.

Every week, the DataseamGrid processes 300 man-years worth of calculations. Yeah, that’s 300 years of calculations every week. Drug discovery usually takes 10 to 15 years, but the DataseamGrid blazes through that work in a fraction of the usual time. It is one of the largest pipelines of potential new cancer drugs in the country. Researchers here are about to start human trials this year of a new drug discovered by the supercomputer, which, if successful, may lead to an entirely new class of cancer drugs.

A few years ago at a MacWorld party, I spotted a guy I knew and barged in while he was talking to someone else. “Have you got a story for me?” I asked. He came back with a few suggestions, each less newsworthy than the last. His former conversation partner stood by in silence. Then Mr. no-news said, “Wait a minute: this guy runs the largest Mac supercomputer in the world!”

That guy was Brian Gupton, one of the brains behind the DataseamGrid in Kentucky featured in this week’s magazine. We talked for a couple of hours, lost in conversation in the middle of a party. I liked him immediately on a personal level: here’s a guy from a blue-collar background who is hugely passionate about education. And it turned out he had built this gigantic supercomputer that was trawling through massive amounts of data in the search for a cancer cure.

There were so many strands to the story.

At the time we met, there were two promising cancer drugs in the works. One of them appeared to be almost 100 percent effective at eradicating stage IV carcinomas. I remember being completely flabbergasted: “Are you sure no one has written about this?” His answer was even more astonishing: only local press had picked up the story.

I was amazed that he’d managed to build a world-class research tool in a place that was being decimated by the declining coal industry. It was a public/private partnership, and an early example of utility computing – this was before cloud computing had taken off.  Another fascinating detail: some of the drugs they were exploring were being grown in genetically modified tobacco plants.

Gupton and his partners built the supercomputer with Apple’s Xgrid, a software package for distributed computing  which, at the time, came built into OS X.  This meant that anybody could build their own supercomputer. And it meant that universities, schools, research centers could potentially become these powerful grids, following in Dataseam’s footsteps. (Apple has since removed Xgrid from Snow Leopard, making that less possible.) Many school districts buy iPads for kids now, favoring one-on-one computing without desktops. Yet Gupton is as passionate as ever and the researchers are still bullish, saying it’s the largest cancer drug pipeline in the country.

Today, the Grid hums as researchers look for chemicals to disrupt or inhibit the growth of cancer. Based on the modeling techniques that won the 2013 Nobel Prize for Chemistry they’ve built a simulator that takes a 3D model of a cancer protein and matches it against a molecular model of a chemical, working with a library of 20 million chemicals.

This supercomputer on a shoestring is still going strong.

CUPERTINO, Calif. — The Cult of Mac team is heading down to Cupertino to cover the special 30th anniversary celebration of the Mac, which promises to feature many of the original members of the Mac dev team.

Hit the jump for our liveblog of the evening’s events. We’ll start posting at about 5.30PM PST, about 30 minutes before the event is scheduled to start.

The Mac 30th Anniversary Celebration is being held at Cupertino’s Flint Center; the same 2,400-seat venue where Steve Jobs first introduced the Mac on January 24, 1984.

It was organized by Steve Jobs’ old friend Daniel Kottke, and filmmaker Gabreal Franklin, an early Mac software developer who is making a video documentary about the era.

There will be music, unreleased photos and video, and a big group photo. The event will feature three panel discussions:

• Conception — Daniel Kottke, Larry Tesler, Rod Holt, Jerry Manock, Marc LeBrun, and Bill Fernandez will talk about the origins of the Mac.
• The Birth of the Mac — Bill Atkinson, Randy Wigginton, Andy Hertzfeld, Bruce Horn, George Crow and Caroline Rose will tell their first-hand stories about creating the Macintosh.
• Coming of Age of Mac — 3rd party software developers including Charlie Jackson, Jim Rea, Heidi Roizen, Ty Roberts, David Bunnell, Marc Canter, Maryline Delbourg Delphis, Adam Hertz and Steve Jasik will talk about the software that gave the Mac critical mass.

During the evening, Apple’s original angel investor and 2nd CEO, Mike Markkula, will gather 100 members of the dev team on stage for a group photo.

If you’re in the area, tickets start at $109.75 each and are available via Ticketmaster. Yeah, it’s pricey, but after expenses, all proceeds will be donated to charity, organizers say.

Apple is getting ready for a 30th Mac Anniversary party at the company HQ, according to pictures that have just started showing up on Instagram.

Several pictures from Apple’s Cupertino HQ taken in the last hour or so show giant birthday banners that have been hung off buildings. “Happy Birthday, Mac,” they say.

The photos are accompanied by hashtags mentioning #party and #concert. One picture shows technicians unpacking equipment, possibly for a live music act. In 2011, the British supergroup Coldplay played a set during the tribute to Steve Jobs.

Here are some more pictures of the party preparations. There’s also pictures of the big posters around the campus quad with thousands of employee’s names.

UPDATE: The U.S. pop band One Republic played the gig that was attended by hundreds of employees. Here’s a short clip of the performance.

Apple CEO Tim Cook even tweeted about it. “Celebrating Mac’s 30th with some of my closest friends in Cupertino with OneRepublic,” he wrote. “Awesome.”

Tim Cook traveled to China for the third time in as many months to seal a blockbuster deal with China Mobile, the world’s largest mobile carrier. Apple is now available on all of China’s largest cell phone networks, opening up a market of mind-boggling proportions. Cook, in a rare TV interview with the chairman of China mobile, said he was “incredibly optimistic” about Apple’s prospects.

People underestimate how big a deal China will be in the next 10 years. The West still thinks of it as a poor country, but within a decade more than three-quarters of the urban population will be middle class, according to McKinsey. By next year, China will account for about 20 percent, or $27 billion, of global luxury sales, according to another McKinsey report. Whether shopping at home or abroad, Chinese consumers are snapping up pricey cars, jewelry, clothes and watches. This is a tidal shift in an enormous economy. The pundits who say that Apple should be making a low-cost phone to compete with low-cost Android phones have got it wrong. Apple will end up selling every top of the line phone they can make and then some.

There are a few seeming contradictions to these trends. China may be known for its massive commerce of counterfeits, but middle-class consumers there are primed to pay a premium for the genuine article. Apple’s iPhones and other goods have clear status value, and middle-class Chinese consumers will buy them en masse.

Luxury car sales already prove this point: Jaguar sales were up 157% in China in 2013, nearly three times the growth in any other region. Growth is so strong, Jaguar Land Rover is shifting sales from Europe and the US to China, it’s now their primary market. Mercedes and Lexus are selling so many cars in China at a huge markup they’re not even bothering to export them. Even low-end retailers are adjusting their wares to suit these upscale tastes: Wal-Mart is also aggressively expanding in China, where they’re targeting the upper-middle class with suburban stores that require a car to reach and the shelves are stocked with pricey merch.

Japan in the 80s had a reputation for cheap shoddy knock-offs, now it’s the world’s third largest economy. Korea went through the same transition, thanks in large part to Samsung and other global conglomerates. China’s next. But now there’s a difference is scale: Tim Cook’s giddiness is due to the fact that the next decade, China will become a vast middle class economy with hundreds millions of consumers who want Apple’s products.

The essential Apple product will stay the same. I predict that Apple’s response will be much like that iconic American chain, McDonald’s. In addition to clogging arteries with Big Macs and fries from Norway to Lebanon, the local restaurants give a nod to local traditions. In France there are high-end pastries, there’s the Maharaja Mac of lamb or chicken in India and rice burgers in Hong Kong. It’ll be fascinating to see what Apple will offer in the way of “local menu” items in China.

The big intrigue in the tech world today is why Google bought Nest Labs for $3.2 billion and Apple didn’t.

A lot of the speculation is paranoid: Google wants to track everyone offline as well as online, and Nest’s thermostat and smoke alarms give the Googleplex motion sensors right in peoples’ homes.

But wouldn’t Apple be a more natural fit for the home-automation startup? Nest was co-founded by two former Apple staffers, Tony Fadell and Matt Rogers. Fadell was one the fathers of the iPod — a key hardware engineer who led the music player’s development over 17 generations. Rogers was one of Fadell’s top lieutenants.

With great design and easy interfaces, Nest’s combination of hardware and internet software services makes its products very Apple-like. And as home automation is poised to take off (thanks largely to the iPhone and iPad), Apple is surely interested in this potentially huge market.

So why didn’t Apple didn’t pick up the company? Maybe it’s because Jony Ive, Apple’s head designer, was responsible for getting Tony Fadell pushed out of Cupertino.

LAS VEGAS — We’ve heard the same story for years: the revolution in home automation is just around the corner! And yet, despite the hype, it still hasn’t arrived. But talk to vendors at CES, and they say it finally is just around the corner — thanks to the iPhone.

The iPhone finally gives ordinary consumers a bunch of good reasons to automate their homes, beyond the geeky thrill of turning on the sprinklers from the couch. For example, it can alleviate the universal anxiety of worrying about the stove when away on vacation. Paired with a connected-range (there are several on show here at CES), your iPhone can you tell you if the oven is on, and then let you switch it off.

The best evidence that home automation has arrived is that the nation’s home builders are finally including home automation technology in many new homes as standard. Lennar Homes, the third biggest home builder in the US, is making home automation standard in more than 20,0000 new homes this year, said Matt McGroven, marketing leader of Nexia, a San Francisco-based home automation company.

Nexia makes an app that works in conjunction with a Home Bridge ($60 on Amazon) and service ($9 a month). With 70% of users on iOS, Nexia controls a wide range of automated products, from nannycams to lighting, locks, thermostats, and dozens of others.

“You can do a bunch of cool and genuinely useful things,” he said.

LAS VEGAS — The simplest solution is always the best. Take external battery packs for your iPhone, which are sometimes hard to use when you’re actually talking on the phone. Either you have to remove your case to snap in a battery case, or you have a long cord dangling to an external pack in your pocket.

MyCharge’s clever Talk & Charge ($100) is a slim external battery pack that works with any and every iPhone case on the market because it doesn’t physically attach to your iPhone; you just hold it against the back of your iPhone while talking, like an electronics sandwich. Simple.

It’s almost the same size and shape as an iPhone 5s or 5c. It boasts a 3000mAh battery (good for more than two full iPhone 5 charges) and a Lightning cable built right in, so you’ll never forget your charging cable again. It’s a nice touch.

In fact, I think all of MyCharge’s wares are thoughtfully designed. The tech is pretty good too. According to the company, they are the fastest chargers on the market. Check out their well-designed charging bricks:

LAS VEGAS, CES 2014 – At the big “CES Unveiled” press event on Sunday night, one of the biggest draws was the TrewGrip keyboard; a funky Bluetooth keyboard for smartphones and tablets with the keys on the back of the device.

The company’s reps were mobbed by curious journalists, jockeying each other to get a better a look at the keyboard that claims to be “the evolution of typing.”

Designed for typists on the go, like healthcare professionals making hospital rounds, the TrewGrip is a unique reverse keyboard with a full set of QWERTY keys on the back.

Using it requires retraining and takes a week or more to master, but at the booth, company reps were tapping out 60-80 words a minute. Not as fast as many touch-typists on a regular keyboard, but a lot faster than pecking away on a glass screen.

A few years ago I bought a cycle computer to help me train for the Death Ride, a single-day, 130-mile bicycle ride through California’s Sierra Nevada mountains. It was a top-of-the-line GPS-equipped device from Garmin. It had digital maps and turn-by-turn directions and every feature under the sun. It measured speed and performance, including things like cadence (pedaling speed) and climbing rate.

I bought it mostly to use with a heart-rate monitor, which fellow riders advised me to use to modulate my effort. If you keep your heart below a certain threshold, you can pretty much ride all day. All the other members on the team (The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Team in Training program. Fantastic, btw) had the same high-end models. We all had different bikes, but the same Garmin computer.

At first I didn’t much care for most of the measurements it took. But as I got fitter, I got faster, and I started to look at my average speed over those long-distance training rides, which were often 100 miles or more. Every week the average speed crept up, even though the rides got longer and harder.

Oddly, because I wasn’t expecting it, that one simple number proved to be a huge motivator. Every weekend I’d look forward to a 120-mile ride through the hills of the Bay Area just so I could add 1 or 2 MPH to my average speed.

Proselytizers of digital fitness gadgets pitch the “quantified self” as the best way to take control of your health; know thyself through your data.

I’m not an A-Type personality by any means, someone who sets goals and measures my performance. I’m the opposite, in fact. I mostly avoid all the numbers in my life — my bank balance, the traffic to the Cult of Mac website, sales of my books. Because if the numbers aren’t good, I get depressed and I can’t function for a day or two. Better to avoid the numbers altogether.

I’ve suffered from depression since I was a kid. It’s not a big deal, but once a month or so I need to withdraw for a couple of days. It’s a physical thing, regular as clockwork. As I’ve grown older, a couple of days can sometimes stretch into several days, and sometimes, very rarely, into weeks.

For me, the best cure for depression is exercise. It doesn’t actually cure depression, because I can’t exercise when I’m into the deep blue. I can’t force myself to do it. But it does keep it at bay. If I exercise regularly, it don’t get depressed as often. Trouble is, work and life too often get in the way.

More recently, I’ve started wearing a Jawbone Up wristband, which I bought mostly out of curiosity. I had the idea I’d use it to get fit, but I really didn’t like it at first. I was exercising only sporadically, and the graphs just showed how sedentary I was. They were clear, graphic representations of chronic inactivity. I was flatlining. Again, instead of motivating me to get off the couch, I simply stopped looking at it.

Then I started running regularly at the gym. I uploaded the Jawbone once a week or so, but didn’t pay it much mind. But again, as I slowly got faster and better at running, I started to pay more attention to the data. The graphs would show a huge spike of activity in the day when I exercised, making me feel slightly guilty, even anxious, on the days that I didn’t.

The feedback started to become a motivator. It wasn’t the main motivator — that was the running itself. I started to look forward to the run. The graph at the end of the day was just the icing on the cake.

After 22 years at the Wall Street Journal reviewing technology, columnist Walt Mossberg is moving on. In his final column, Mossberg picks the 12 devices that had the most impact over the years.

“I chose these 12 because each changed the course of digital history by influencing the products and services that followed, or by changing the way people lived and worked,” Mossberg writes.

One company completely dominates the list. Guess which one it is (and what devices he chose)?

UPDATE: There’s no glass on the front of the Stonestown store. Earlier reports indicated the store was fronted by glass, but it’s actually wide open. It has a big metal gate that is closed at night. “Comes right out of the walls. Pretty nifty,” says one shopper who visited the store.

Apple just reopened its retail store at San Francisco’s Stonestown mall, and just check it out. It’s one long piece of curved glass. spectacular!

Here’s another shot:

While accepting a lifetime achievement award from Auburn University, his alma mater, Apple CEO Tim Cook told of how The Ku Klux Klan, Martin Luther King and Senator Robert Kennedy shaped his passion for human rights and equality. “Growing up in Alabama in the 1960s, I saw the devastating impacts of discrimination,” Cook said in New York on December 10th. “Remarkable people were denied opportunities and treated without basic human dignity solely because of the color of their skin.”

He recalled childhood memories of watching crosses burn on neighbors’ lawns in Alabama. “This image was permanently imprinted in my brain and it would change my life forever,” Cook said. “For me the cross burning was a symbol of ignorance, of hatred, and a fear of anyone different than the majority. I could never understand it, and I knew then that America’s and Alabama’s history would always be scarred by the hatred that it represented.”

You can watch the full speech below the fold:

Ever wanted to take a tour of Apple’s secret Industrial Design studio in Cupertino? Now you can — a virtual one, anyway — just for writing a review of my new book about Jony Ive. It doesn’t even have to be a good review!

Located on the ground floor of Infinite Loop II behind frosted glass windows, the industrial design studio is where Ive and his team of design elves cook up Apple’s awesome products.

Few have been inside — even some of Apple’s own executives haven’t seen it. Rumor has it that the former head of iOS, Scott Forstall, wasn’t allowed inside, even when he was developing the iPhone’s operating system. Only one published photograph has ever been taken inside the studio. And no, Blue Peter and the Objectified documentary weren’t filmed there, contrary to popular opinion.

Now you can take a tour. I had a 3-D model of the studio created, based on detailed descriptions and diagrams by former designers who worked inside. I used it to create a video tour of the studio, showing the layout and explaining how everything works. I think the video turned out great, and here’s how you get a sneak peek.

The worst gift I ever gave was the time that I presented my father with a doormat for Christmas.

In my defense, he was impossible to buy for and I had already tried everything. Robes. Records. Books. In total desperation on Christmas Eve, I noticed that his doormat was all frayed and coming apart.  This struck me as a genius idea. Practical. Useful. Not one more piece of junk cluttering up his life. It seems to me that gift giving is too often about buying more stuff for people who don’t need it; here was an opportunity to give him something he would use every day and actually needed.

It seemed like an inspired purchase until he opened it up. There was the family reunited on Christmas morning, staring at a crappy doormat. Dad was unimpressed. Then my brothers started cracking up. It quickly became a family joke: my gift to him was the worst Christmas gift of all time. It was too late to resurrect my reputation for that year and many years after, despite all my thoughtful presents.

I didn’t start out as a bad gift giver. When we were kids, my brothers and I used to spend a lot of time making stuff for our parents. We went through an Origami phase that folded in the thoughtful with the handmade:  I remember laboring over a box for my mom to keep her jewelry in, for example. And of course, my parents would make a big fuss over our handiwork, like parents do.  Then, as you grow up, you end up being lazier about choosing presents. You lose touch with your parents and sometimes the other people in your life. You don’t know what they’re interested in or really need.

Gift giving can become a meaningless routine — the worst gifts to my mind are the really generic ones. Like a tie rack or electric wine bottle opener. You know, basically anything for sale in the SkyMall designed to placate that loved one you forgot about while traveling. These are the inexcusable gadgets that don’t work better than the no-tech versions, plus the batteries die, they require space on the counter, etc. And, let’s face it: you cannot really improve on a corkscrew. (How many wine bottles do you open on a daily basis, anyway?) That’s the kind of  default gift you fall back on because it costs a little more, it’s designed as a “gift item,” and when you don’t know what else to get someone, you buy it.

Enter the 2013 Cult of Mac Gift Guide. We’ve picked out the stuff that is genuinely useful, that will add some value to your iDevices and those of your loved ones. Charlie Sorrel, our reviews editor, is captaining the effort. All year round, he wades through thousands of press releases and has a great eye for striking gadget paydirt with things you really want and need to own. Plus you can bet that he’s seen every iPhone handlebar accessory and pedalled them all out, too, with an eye to keeping your wallet half full, which never hurts.

What’s on my list? This year, my mom got her very first iPhone. (A gold one!) So I’ll be looking out for something useful for her; she’s a typical retiree who takes a lot of pictures but is used to be taking them with a regular camera.

Spoiler alert: she definitely won’t receiving an iDoormat.

When I moved to the States 20 years ago from the UK, I had two suitcases. One contained my clothes and other worldly possessions. The other case was filled with my crappy old Macintosh.

The Mac was obsolete even then, but leaving it behind was unthinkable. I held on to it for decades, hauling it across the country and multiple house moves. I’d still have it now, if I hadn’t cooked it showing my kids the joys of OS 6. Moronically, I blocked the top vents with a box and the explosive pop of overheated circuits nearly gave me a heart attack.

The busted Mac was just one of a garage-full of creaky old Apple technology I chucked out recently in a major de-cluttering (mandated, btw, by the wife). The list is too heartbreaking to mention in full, but included dozens of desktops and laptops, as well as boxfuls of obsolete iPods, mice, keyboards, modems, printers, monitors and cables.

Other things that I threw out and probably shouldn’t have? I also disposed of boxes of Apple press passes and press kits, including one for the special-edition U2 iPod that included a nifty poster. I kept one “Think Different” poster (featuring Gandhi) but recycled a bunch of others.

Why did I hoard all this stuff? Mostly laziness. eWaste is a headache. It’s easier to just hold onto it. But part of it was because a lot of this stuff still worked! I might have gotten a new, bigger monitor, but there was nothing wrong with the old one. Sure, it’s VGA resolution, but it still functions!

And then, I always felt there would be a time when I needed that FireWire extension cord, or a serial-to-USB adapter. Right? I’d kick myself if I had one once but threw it out when I needed it. But mostly it was sentimentality. Each item had a specific memory, triggered by softly stroking its chunky beige keys.

SAN FRANCISCO — Apple is blocking the donation of 30-year-old documents to a museum, claiming they contain valuable trade secrets.

“It’s silly,” said Hartmut Esslinger, the design guru recruited to help Apple become a leader in design in the early 1980s.

Speaking at a Jony Ive book launch party on Thursday night, Esslinger explained that Apple has prevented him from donating some historical old documents to a museum.

Esslinger’s design firm, Frog Design, was hired by Steve Jobs to bring world-class design to Apple. Esslinger’s “Snow White” design language, characterized by elegant off-white plastic cases, influenced the entire computer industry for more than a decade.

The first time I met Jony Ive, he carried my backpack around all night.

Our paths crossed at an early-evening party at Macworld Expo in 2003. As a journeyman reporter hustling for Wired.com, I knew exactly who he was: Jonathan Paul Ive was on the cusp of becoming the world’s most famous designer.

I was surprised he was willing to chat with me.

We discovered a shared love of beer and a sense of culture shock, too, both of us being ex-pat Brits living in San Francisco. Together with Jony’s wife Heather, we reminisced about British pubs, the great newspapers and how much we missed British music (electronic house music in particular). After a few pints, though, I leapt up, realizing I was late for an appointment. I hurried off, leaving without my laptop bag.

Sir Jonathan Ive is extremely self-effacing. The only time he says “I” is when he’s talking about the iPhone or iPad. Talking about his work, he replaces “I” with “we.” It’s always about his team, his collaborators, and Apple, the company he works for. For Jony, it’s all about the work.

As senior vice president of industrial design at Apple, the world’s most valuable company, he’s been the world’s leading technology innovator for more than two decades. He’s led the design of a string of iconic products: the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad, plus a score of other innovations in between. He’s won every design award under the sun. He’s even been knighted.

In 2011, Sir Jonathan Ive was promoted to Apple’s overall design guru, in charge of both hardware and software. It was a position formerly held by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. Jony provides direction and leadership for industrial design, the group primarily responsible for hardware, as well as the human interface software teams. Hardware and software have traditionally been run as separate divisions at Apple. Only one man straddled both groups — Steve Jobs. Jony has stepped into the role that Jobs left with his passing. Tim Cook is CEO, but Jony is Apple’s creative driving force. He’s Apple’s MVP.

You wouldn’t know it if you met him. Born in Chingford, Essex, the 43-year-old Brit is quiet, even shy. He’s super friendly and soft spoken. He is extremely private. Even Apple says it doesn’t know his precise date of birth. He dresses in jeans and T-shirts and always seems to be carrying something in a plastic bag. He speaks softly but he doesn’t look like a wallflower: he’s big and muscular, a legacy of a lifetime working out. He has close-cropped hair, which might make him look menacing if he wasn’t so obviously a nice guy.

Jony is the most celebrated designer of his generation. In 2002, he was named the first Designer of the Year by the Design Museum, which he won again in 2003. That year he was inducted as a member of the Royal Designers for Industry (extremely prestigious). The following year he was given the Royal Society of the Art’s Benjamin Franklin Medal and the BBC named him the “Most Influential Person on British Culture,” beating out JK Rowling and Ricky Gervais.

In 2005, Jony was presented with three Silver Pencils from the British Design & Art Direction (D&AD) association, some of the most prestigious awards in the industry. In 2006, he got a fourth, the most Silver Pencils ever awarded to an individual. One Silver Pencil is a career maker; four the mark of an off-the-charts genius. He subsequently got six Black Pencils, more than anyone else, ever. Jony has a record number of D&AD awards; and he got them in a stretch of just 10 years. In 2006, he was made a Commander of the British Empire; and in 2010 he was knighted by Princess Anne at Buckingham Palace. By March 2013, he was named in more than 600 design and utility patents.

In 2011, D&AD bestowed another giant award on Jony: it named Apple’s design team the best design studio of the last 50 years. It was one of the first public recognitions for the group as a whole, and Apple felt the award was important enough to fly the normally reclusive, ultra secretive group en masse to London to receive it — the first time ever.

While racking up awards, he’s helped push Apple’s sales off the charts. In the nearly two decades that Jony has been at Apple, the company has pulled back from the brink of bankruptcy and is now one of the world’s most valuable companies. In 1992, the year he joined Apple as a designer, the company made $530 million profit selling beige computers. In 2012, Apple’s made $41.7 billion profit on $156.5 billion revenue. Yeah, billion!

The company makes gorgeous products that compel customers to camp out overnight and sometimes even riot. AAPL, as it is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, currently has a market cap of about $475 billion, making it the biggest company on the planet after the oil giant Exxon.

A lot of this had to do with Steve Jobs of course, the genius who toiled for three decades to bring personal computers to the masses. Jobs always had an eye for talent, launching Apple in 1977 with the hardware genius Steve Wozniak. For the last dozen years, his chief creative partner at Apple was Jony Ive. Jony is a genuinely original thinker. His products are not just the same old things repackaged to look new; they are new. They are products no one could have imagined a few years ago.

Steve Jobs was a genius — no doubt about that. Apple was six months from bankruptcy when he took over as CEO in 1997. Under his leadership, Apple became one of the world’s most powerful companies, the most trusted brand, and disrupted entire industries. He didn’t have an easy career. He spent many years in the wilderness, and even when Apple was bouncing back, he didn’t get the credit he deserved. It was only late in his career, after the iPhone became a smash hit, that he started to be lionized as a business genius. And after his death, he was deified.

But was it all Steve Jobs? Is the company doomed without him? What happens when one man gets all the credit? The truth is more complex. Apple wouldn’t be Apple without Steve Jobs, but it wasn’t just him. Jobs didn’t design anything, and he didn’t write any code. The creative work was done by others, though he had a hand in guiding it.

I’ve been to Apple’s current campus a few times, mostly for product presentations at a modest theater Apple calls the Town Hall.

When I went down to see the introduction of the iPod Hi-Fi, Apple’s attempt at a boombox, Steve Jobs had had a warren of nearby offices transformed into an Ideal Home exhibition.

It was February 2006, a couple of years after Jobs’ first treatment for cancer but before his liver transplant. He tried his best to get through the presentation with his characteristic charisma and energy, but he seemed to tire quickly and towards the end he obviously just wanted to get it over.

However, after introducing the iPod Hi-Fi and some other products, everyone was herded across the hall. Jobs wanted to showcase the iPod Hi-Fi in its “natural” surroundings and some offices had been dressed up to look like your typical living room, bedroom and den.

The iPod Hi-Fi was a $350 white plastic boombox — Apple’s attempt at replacing customer’s home stereos. During his presentation, Jobs said he’d spent small fortunes over the years on audiophile gear, but the iPod Hi-Fi sounded so good, he was now he was replacing his home stereo with one.

As we trooped from one room to the next, I found myself beside him. Ever the intrepid reporter, I introduced myself, thrust out my hand and asked him if really had replaced his Marantz stereo with a boombox? As he towered over me, he just looked down contemptuously at my outstretched hand, and said one word: “Yes!”

Of course, there was no way to use this in my story. But I was impressed with his antisocial nerve. Many people buckle in the face of social niceties like shaking hands: not Jobs.

Apple’s HQ isn’t exactly Grand Central Station, open to all. I’ve never eaten at Caffè Macs or played foosball on the grass in the middle of campus. I did get a walkthrough once, when I visited someone’s office, but was told to keep looking straight ahead and not snoop into anything.

You can drive around the campus on Infinite Loop, the ring road surrounding the nerve center of Apple operations, but the only place for the public to visit is the Company Store in the first building: One Infinite Loop.

Here you can pick up Apple-branded pens, mouse pads and T-Shirts. I bought a shirt that said, “I visited the Mothership.” Apparently, the most popular shirt says “I visited the Apple campus. But that’s all I’m allowed to say.”

It’s unclear what public access anyone will have to the new spaceship Apple Campus 2. The theater, where Tim Cook will presumably preside over future product presentations, is outside the main donut (and underground to boot!).

Let’s hope there are opportunities to visit, even if it’s only to shop at a small company store.

Before he died, Steve Jobs said architecture students would be able to marvel at the huge headquarters, which he envisioned as the best in the world.

Let’s hope Apple honors this, and doesn’t close off access to outsiders like a glass prison you can’t break into. We all deserve to spend some time in the fantastic space that Jobs envisioned.

Leander’s new book about Jony Ive and the Apple design studio is out in November. Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products is available for pre-order on Amazon.

I had a jokey book trailer made to promote my new book about Jony Ive, Apple’s head designer. And Apple’s had it pulled off YouTube!

The video wasn’t even public. It was unlisted. I offered a sneak peek to readers who pre-ordered the book, which is being released next Thursday November 14.

The video pokes fun at Jony Ive, Apple and myself. But last night I got an email from Google saying that it had been disabled because of a copyright claim from Apple.

I had hoped that the video was protected by fair use. The rules of fair use are ambiguous, but in general, you are allowed to remix and re-use previous material, as long as the resulting work is “transformative.” If it adds “new expression or meaning” to the original, then it’s fair use. I think the book trailer did. It’s a classic remix of several previous Apple product videos. A parody. And parody is a form of expression generally protected from copyright claims.

SAN FRANCISCO — Apple went from being chump of the tech world to champ, and what was the product that turned it all around?

That was the question posed to a panel of ex-Apple designers at a special event here in the city.

The answers might surprise you.

I’m pleased to formally introduce my new book on Apple’s head designer, Sir Jonathan Ive — Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products.

Published by Penguin Portfolio on November 14, it’s the first full-length biography of the worlds’ most-celebrated designer.

I’m super psyched about it. It turned out great. I managed to talk to a bunch of inside sources, who reveal some of Apple’s most guarded secrets about how the company really works.

I picked up one of Apple’s new iPad Airs on Friday. I didn’t think I’d be impressed — but I am. It’s light, fast, and beautifully constructed. Is it the perfect tablet? It’s pretty close. Here’s all you need to know:

• It’s amazingly light. It almost feels hollow. It’s much lighter than you expect. Which means that it’s effortless to hold for reading and carrying around. It’s a big and important difference. It’s super portable.
• It’s plenty fast. Annoying little lags on previous iPads — like slow rendering Web pages with multiple tabs — are gone. It’s much more useable than my iPad 3.
• Battery life is great — more than 10 hours of continuous use.

And there you have it. It’s almost as light as the iPad mini with the speed and big, beautiful screen of a full-size tablet. Go get one. It’s great.