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.
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.
Macworld 2011 is being held at Moscone West, the same venue as Apple's WWDC. CC-licensed photo by w00kie: http://www.flickr.com/photos/w00kie/212367760/
SAN FRANCISCO, Macworld 2011 — Proving that the show can go on without Apple, Macworld 2011 opens today and is bigger and better than ever.
Well, bigger and better than last year.
This is the second year of Macworld without Apple, but the show has attracted 10% more exhibitors than 2010 and is on track for 25,000 visitors, organizers say.
“The show is shaping up good,” Macworld general manager Paul Kent told CultofMac.com. “If the numbers go right, we’re going to have about a 25% increase in attendance.”
Apple’s new TV commercial for the iPad shows how versatile the device is. The iPad is… for students, teachers, for news, for reading. the iPad is.. iconic.
The white iPhone’s light-leakage issues may have been fixed with a new kind of paint, the Japanese site Macotakara reports.
As previously reported exclusively by CultofMac.com, the white iPhone 4 was delayed because light leaks into the camera ruining photos, especially when the internal flash is used.
According to the Macotakara, Apple has partnered with an unnamed Japanese company that has developed a “miracle painting material.” The new paint helps Apple control the thickness prior to application, solving the light-leakage issues. However, the Japanese blog posts gives new meaning to the term ‘vague.’ Details are scarce.
Verizon COO Lowell McAdam and Apple's Tim Cook at the launch of Verizon iPhone in early January.
Verizon is flip-flopping on unlimited iPhone data plans faster than a fish out of water.
This morning, Verizon’s chief operating officer, Lowell McAdam, told the Wall Street Journal that Verizon’s iPhone 4 customers would be treated to an unlimited $30-a-month data plan. Otherwise, the network wouldn’t be able to compete with AT&T, which has grandfathered a lot of iPhone customers to unlimited plans, even though it now offers only tiered plans.
But not so fast. McAdam now says the unlimited data plan will be a “temporary offer,” and that Verizon will also move to tiered pricing in the not too distant future. Better act fast.
How long do you think the unlimited data window will be? A week? A month? Six months?
Satarii is a small San Francisco startup trying to get a super cool iPhone video accessory off the ground.
The Satarii Star is a tracking device that follows your every move while shooting video. Just set the iPhone in the cradle and put the tracking device in your pocket. When you move, the tracking cradle swivels around to keep you in the frame. It’s a super clever idea and looks to work pretty well. See the video below (the fun starts a few seconds in).
Master storyteller Mike Daisey’s one-man-show “The Agony and The Ecstasy of Steve Jobs” is a theater piece that every Apple fan should see.
It’s a laugh-out-loud monologue about the world of Apple, but it delivers an important message: The products we love are made under inhumane conditions.
Here’s the moment when Apple sold its 10 billionth app over the weekend. The screenshot was captured by Fabio M Zambelli of the Italin tech blog, SetteB.IT.
Curiously, Zambelli took the screenshot at 10.30AM GMT. However, the winner of the sweepstakes says the winning app was downloaded at 9:30 GMT. “For 1 hour a lot of people wasted time,” said Zambelli in an email.
Gail Davis of Orpington Kent hung up the phone when Apple called to say she'd won a $10,000 iTunes gift card. She thought it was a prank call.
The winner of the Apple’s 10 billionth App download sweepstakes nearly made a horrible mistake: she hung up the phone when Apple called to say she’d won.
“I thought it was a prank call,” says Gail Davis of Orpington, Kent, UK. “I said, ‘Thank you very much, I’m not interested’ and I hung up.”
1. He appears to be single, a “lifelong bachelor.”
2. It’s the subject of gossip inside Apple.
2. Two “well-placed sources” say so.
If Cook steps into the CEO role, Apple’s other executives will encourage him to come out, Valleywag says. This would be a good thing for Silicon Valley and for gay rights.
Being gay is certainly no problem here in the San Francisco Bay Area. No one bats an eyelid. But Apple’s other execs are concerned about public perception, Valleywag says. Could it spell trouble for the Apple brand?
T-Mobile has hinted it may be the third U.S. wireless carrier to get the iPhone.
“Ask Apple,” said T-Mobile executives when asked whether it was getting the iPhone 4 at a press conference in New York today, according to Electronista.
Though neither confirming or denying, T-Mobile’s answer suggests that talks between the carrier and Apple are ongoing. Verizon used similar language in the run up to its announcement that it would be carrying the iPhone.
One issue that T-Mobile did discuss was the readiness of the iPhone’s radio chips. To work on T-Mobile’s network, the iPhone would have to support the 1,700MHz 3G band.
T-Mobile president Philipp Humm said while the current iPhone isn’t compatible with T-Mobile’s network, future 3G chips would support more cellular frequencies.
“We’re not part of the [iPhone] chipset today,” president Philipp Humm said. “But we have chipsets which support five, or up to 10 spectrum bands in the market, so we should expect there will be more degrees of freedom going forward.”
T-Mobile may be eyeing the iPhone 5, which is rumored to have a dual-mode chipset from Qualcomm with both CDMA and GSM. If it includes both 850MHz and 1,700MHz, Apple could produce a single phone that works on almost all carriers.
The great iPad 2 screen resolution debate rages on, this time with a downer rumor from Digg’s Kevin Rose.
There will be no change in the iPad 2’s screen resolution, said Rose on Twitter, citing his “iPad source.” (The tweet seems to have disappeared, but Rose posted a screenshot of his IM on Instagram).
Rose, of course, has a spotty record when it comes to predictions. Less than two week’s ago, he was saying it would have a Retina Display. The news is sure to a bummer for those of us holding out for a Retina Display, or something close.
The screws are unique to Apple and serve one purpose only: to keep users out.
The plan, says iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens, is to force customers to upgrade their gadgets sooner than necessary. They also make them reliant on Apple for expensive repairs and upgrades.
“It’s a form of planned obsolescence,” says Wiens. “General Motors invented planned obsolescence in the 1920s. Apple is doing the same thing.”
Designer Charis Tsevis built this photo mosaic of Steve Jobs for the Italian magazine Panorama. Look carefully: it’s all Apple products. Can you spot the original iSight camera? Check the detail of the eye below.
Reader Adam from Cape Town thinks Apple should call the next iPad the “iPad 2x.” Here’s his reasoning:
Calling the next iPad the iPad 2x makes a lot of sense. It can be used effectively in their marketing messages, to differentiate it from the current iPad, and also to set it apart from its competitors.
It’s the iPad 2, twice as good as the original iPad, with:
2x resolution per axis (even if the camera will take smaller resolution pics).
2x the speed, with dual core processing.
2x the RAM, to achieve the above.
2x cameras. And if one of the cameras were 8.3MP, it would by 2x full HD…
One could add even more to the list.
I’m pretty sure they won’t get 2x docks, but it would be a nice! Similarly, I doubt they’ll squeeze 2x battery life out of the new iPad.
Of course, the one thing that’s difficult to market is 2x as thin and/or light, makes more sense to say half as thin and/or heavy…
This render is supposed to be Hewlett-Packard/Palm’s upcoming web tablet — or rather, two tablets.
According to Engadget, HP/Palm is working on a pair of tablets for launch February 9 and available later this year, likely September.
There’s a 9-inch webOS tablet codenamed Topaz and a 7-inch model named Opal, which will be pitched as an e-reader.
They feature a front-facing camera, micro USB port and a Touchstone back for wireless charging. There may be versions for different carriers: WiFi-only, AT&T 3G, and Verizon LTE in September; AT&T LTE in July 2012.
Most interestingly, the tabs are buttonless. There’s no Home button. The Home button is something that Apple is also interested in doing away with — and Apple has just introduced system-wide multitouch gestures in the latest iOS beta.
Apple’s blowout holiday quarter included the sale of more than 16 million iPhones.
That may seem like a lot, but look at the chart above from The Atlantic: it looks like Apple’s just getting started.
In the last two quarters, Apple sold 30 million iPhones — half of what it sold in the previous three years (60 million units). In other words, iPhone sales are starting to seriously kick up.
Apple COO Tim Cook is a bit of a cypher. Despite being the number two guy at Apple for a good dozen years, his public appearances have been few and brief.
To get better acquainted, check out this video of a commencement speech he gave at Auburn University, his alma mater.
In it, Cook thanks Steve Jobs for changing his life and how joining Apple in 1998, when the company was on the ropes, turned out to be the “best decision of my life.”
I hate to say it, but I have a bad feeling about Steve Jobs’ latest leave of absence. I’m not optimistic he will return to Apple. He’s been gravely ill and has cheated death, but there are some hard numbers about cancer and transplant survival rates that even someone as charmed as Jobs can’t escape.
I sincerely hope I’m wrong, but I get a feeling this is the start of Steve Jobs moving on from Apple. There will be a slow phasing out this year as he hands the reigns to Tim Cook. I expect it will be drawn out, a gradual transition of power. But I don’t think Jobs is returning to Apple.
The big question, of course, is how Apple will do without him.
The news of Steve Jobs’ latest medical leave is the top story on the New York Times‘ website right now. The Times‘ top slot is usually reserved for big international news stories, indicting the importance of Apple’s news to the business and technology world. It has pushed out news about Tunisia’s new government and a fresh Wikileaks scandal about offshore banks and alleged tax cheats.
Dan Lyons, aka Fake Steve Jobs, with Tiffany (aka Bike Helmet Girl) and Veronica Belmont
Day Lyons, aka Fake Steve Jobs, has retired his online satirical column on news of Steve Jobs’ medical leave of absence. Lyons did this last time Jobs took medical leave, saying it was in bad taste to impersonate the CEO while he was sick.
This time around, Lyons has some harsh words for reporters who will inevitably pry into Jobs’ health:
