Leander Kahney - page 19

UPDATE: Apple just sent us a statement saying Cano has not been named head of retail. A spokeswoman said: “The search is underway with lots of interest and we are carefully selecting Ron’s successor. We have nothing to announce today.”

Although an official announcement has yet to be made, Cult of Mac has learned that Apple has already replaced its outgoing head of retail, Ron Johnson.

Reports on Monday suggested Apple hasn’t found a replacement for Johnson, its highly-regarded Senior Vice President of Retail. But we’ve been told by a source that Apple has already promoted an internal candidate to Johnson’s job.

Apple’s new retail boss isn’t just some suit, though. He’s one of the first retail employees Apple ever hired, a California surfer dude who has climbed from the sales floor to the very top rung of Apple management.

It’s a real rags-to-riches story that should be inspiration to every stressed out Apple Store sales associate or overworked Genius: your work can be noticed, and you too can go to the very top.

There have been a lot of complaints on Twitter that most of the best bits of Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs have already leaked. After reading sundry blog posts, news stories and tweets about Jobs’s life, is there anything left to read in the actual book?

Yes, there is. There’s plenty. Although the arc of Steve’s story is generally well known, Isaacson has added a ton of new detail to even the most well-trodden stories from Jobs’s life. Trouble is, a lot of it is about Jobs mistreating people.

Walter Isaacson’s book is an unflinching biography of a manifestly great man. But it’s not a fun read. In fact, sometimes it’s a lot like being locked in a room with a borderline sociopath. Powering through Isaacson’s bio will give you unique insight into how Steve Jobs changed the world, but it’s not necessarily a comforting one.

Earlier today I got a chance to talk to Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs’ authorized biographer. Isaacson’s 620-page book hits bookstands today. He spoke while preparing to check out of his hotel in New York, where he’s conducting a whirlwind media tour for the book, which promises to be one of the biggest hits of the year.

In our interview, Isaacson revealed that Jobs was actually a lot more active in his cancer treatment than previous reports have suggested. He also thinks Apple will be OK without Jobs because he spent a decade building a great team and an institution infused with his DNA. And that the man, like the company he built, was an intriguiging mix of the arts and sciences.

If you have questions for Steve Jobs’ authorized biographer, Walter Isaacson, please post them here in the comments.

I have an interview with Isaacson today at 3PM PST. It’s a telephone interview, and I’ll be sure to ask him some questions in the comments.

I’ll post the interview as soon as I get it transcribed, likely early Monday evening.

If you want to hear a really great, revealing and insightful tribute to Steve Jobs, tune into the Celebrating Steve video Apple posted earlier and go to the 48.30 mark.

Here Apple’s long-time head designer Jony Ive starts talking about his “best and most loyal friend.”

Ive’s tribute to Steve is by turns funny, touching and insightful. Unlike a lot of the negative stuff we’ve heard about Steve over the last few weeks, Jony describes Steve’s passion and enthusiasm, his sense of humor, and his great joy in doing things right.

I’d love to post the video here, but it’s streaming only for the moment. Here’s a snippet of what he said:

Now while hopefully the work appeared inevitable. Appeared simple, and easy, it really cost. It cost us all, didn’t it?

But you know what? It cost him most. He cared the most. He worried the most deeply.

He continues:

I thought the 60 Minutes interview broadcast just now with Steve Jobs’ biographer Walter Isaacson was great. Absolutely great.

It covered a lot of ground I was familiar with and is familiar to most other Apple fans too. But it fresh and fascinating because of the accumulation of small details and revelations. Like the fact that Jobs rarely locked his back door in Palo Alto, and that anybody could have walked in off the street, because he didn’t want to pervert his life by being rich. Alternatively, he looked his childhood friend Daniel Kottke in the eye and denied him the shares in Apple that would have made him a millionaire. So many contradictions.

But there were three profound revelations for me, which really shed light on Jobs’ life and work:

iPod 10th Anniversary: To celebrate the iPod’s 10th anniversary on Sunday October 23, we’re running several special features this weekend. We’ll have an illustrated cultural history, appreciations and op eds. Check back for more.

This Mursi woman has two tools essential to survival in Southern Ethiopia: an AK47 and her iPod.

Ever wondered how the iPod became so ubiquitous? Where it came from? How Apple kept all competitors at bay, and made the iPod the key music technology of the 21st century?

We’ve got you covered in this cool infographic of the history of the iPod:

iPod 10th Anniversary: To celebrate the iPod’s 10th anniversary on Sunday October 23, we’re running several special features this weekend. We’ll have an illustrated cultural history, appreciations and op eds. Check back for more.

Fire, the wheel, and the iPod. In the history of invention, gadgets don’t come more iconic than Apple’s digital music player.

The iPod is to the 21st century what the big band was to the ’20s, the radio to the ’40s, or the jukebox to the ’50s – the signature technology that defines the musical culture of the era. And what a marvelous technology the iPod is. Inside Apple’s little white box is magic, pure magic, in the guise of music.

The first review of Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs is in, and it’s a good one.

Writing in the New York Times, critic Janet Maslin says the 630-page tome is “clear, elegant and concise.”

Steve Jobs was one of only 20 people in the world to have his DNA sequenced as well as the DNA of his tumor, Walter Isaacson’s upcoming biography reveals.

After Jobs delayed treatment for cancer for nine months while he tried alternative cures (including eating vegetarian dishes at a San Francisco restaurant with Dr. Dean Ornish), he went all in with the best treatments modern medicine can provide.

Because of the experimental gene therapy, Jobs said he’d either be one of the first to beat cancer, or one of the last to die of it.

Although Steve Jobs is not known for ostentatious displays of his wealth, he was designing his own luxury yacht. And typical of Jobs, he was designing it himself so that he could obsess over every detail.

Apple’s first ad for Siri and the iPhone 4S that started airing on TV tonight. Makes it look very attractive and cool. It’s going to be a monster smash.

BTW: The ad hasn’t yet been added to Apple’s official YouTube account.

Although everyone knows that Apple Computer was named after the namesake fruit, Steve Jobs has never talked about where the name came from — until now (AFAIK).

It was named during one of his fruitarian diets, Walter Isaacson’s new biography of Jobs reveals.

In a conversation with President Obama last year, Steve Jobs sounded like an out-and-out Republican, according to another excerpt from the upcoming official biography.

During President Obama’s trip to Silicon Valley in the fall 2010, where he met several business leaders, Jobs complained about regulations, taxes and the teachers unions. I always thought Jobs had a liberal bent, but he sounds like a member of the Tea Party.

He told Obama he would be a “one-term Presidency” unless he became more friendly to corporations.

The AP has somehow “purchased” an early copy of Walter Isaacson’s official biography of Steve Jobs, which is due to hit store shelves on Monday. According to this initial report, Jobs called Android “grand theft” and threatened to start a “thermonuclear war” with Google.

As Apple’s stores nationwide prepare to close for a few hours on Wednesday to remember Steve Jobs, many are removing the memorials that sprang up on their windows and doorsteps. The memorial at Apple’s flagship store in San Francisco, for example, was removed last week.

Not so the Apple store in Palo Alto, Calif. — Steve’s hometown. Quite the opposite, the number of Post-It tributes has grown to the point that both windows are now almost completely covered. The picture above was snapped just a few hours ago on Tuesday evening.

It’s a nice tribute. Let’s hope they stay up for a while longer. Here are a few more pictures:

Some have noted that the lines for the iPhone 4S on Friday were disappointingly short. Apple might have sold a record 4 million devices in four days, but the launch day lines were nothing compared to those for the iPhone 4 or the iPad 2.

But there was one place where the lines went around the block — and no one seems to have reported it yet.

The big question about the iPhone 4S is whether it’s worth the upgrade.

The answer is yes, and that’s because of Siri, the talking personal assistant.

Siri is unbelievable; a paradigm shift. It’s new way of interacting with computers that’s as big a breakthrough as the original Macintosh with its mouse, windows and icons. In fact, it’s bigger. It’s a much more natural way to interact with machines. It’s a glimpse of the future of computing.

Like the first Mac, it’s far from perfect. We’re at the very beginning of this revolution. But if you want to join the party, you need the 4S.

Lots of people are asking why Woz, Apple’s cofounder and still Apple employee number 1, is first in line to buy an iPhone 4S on Friday morning.

I just caught him on the local news, and he has a very good reason.

This looks cool. Gary Allen of IFOAppleStore just snapped these pictures of Apple’s new iPhone 4S window display. Allen is at the Apple Store on 4th Street in Berkeley.

Here’s a couple more pictures. One shows how these big video displays work:

Each year, the lines for Apple’s iPhone become more of a circus. Last year, it was pro line-sitter Greg Packer at the head of the line, giving tons of TV interviews.

This year, app developer Dillon Horowitz has brought a cow, a calf and a goat to Apple’s flagship NYC store.

The iPhone 4S looks like the iPhone 4, but under the hood it’s a whole new beast.

Here’s the first side-by-side picture showing the differences inside:

Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak is already in line for his iPhone 4S. According to Woz’s Twitter account, he’s first in line at the Los Gatos Apple store.

“The long wait begins,” Woz tweeted, “I’m first in line. The guy ahead was on the wrong side and he’s pissed.”

To celebrate Steve Jobs Day this Friday, Erica Montelongo and Gunter Zieber are getting married at their local Apple Store.

 “Gunter admired Steve Jobs and this is how he wanted to celebrate Steve Jobs Day,” said Montelongo, 34. “And when you add in Tiffany and Co., how could a girl say no?” To learn more about the steve jobs wedding, check out this detailed article.

The WSJ’s crusty old Walt Mossberg, not easily impressed by new gadgets, was also pleased by the iPhone 4S and Siri:

Inside its familiar-looking body there lurks a nascent artificial-intelligence system that has to be tried to be believed.

Walt Mossberg: The iPhone Finds Its Voice