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
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.
Neuhaus Laboratories recognizes that many people’s music collections are on their computers, not racks of CDs.
And so unlike other amplifier manufacturers, Neuhaus’ tube amps are designed first and foremost to be hooked to a computer as their main music source, not a CD player or turntable.
Now Neuhaus has taken the next logical step. It’s the first company to add Bluetooth to an audiophile-quality tube amp. Now you can enjoy super high quality music streaming from an iPhone or iPad.
Trust me, it’s the best thing you’ll ever hear from your iPhone, ever.
It catches Steve Jobs at age 29, one year after the Macintosh was launched. He is by far the youngest person on Forbes’s list of richest Americans and one of only seven who made their fortunes on their own.
He’s portrayed by Playboy as the Mark Zuckerberg of his era: a Valley wunderkind with a magical gift for foreseeing the future. Of course, it’s interesting to look back and see how the future actually panned out.
Jobs comes across as a confident and knowledgeable, but not brash and arrogant. Here’s a few of the highlights:
Australia's State of Victoria is experimenting with an iPad pilot project; likely the first of many. Photo courtesy of Department of Education and Early Childhood Development.
It’s Education Week on CultofMac.com. How’s Apple doing in schools these days? What are the best education apps? Is iTunes U worthwhile? Join us as we learn more about Apple in Education.
The iPad is going to be very big in schools, predicts Professor Mark Warschauer, one of the world’s leading experts in technology and learning.
In an exclusive interview, Prof. Warschauer predicted that schools may soon start buying iPads in big numbers to replace not just desktops and laptops, but also textbooks and other reading materials.
“Until a couple of years ago, the majority of book reading — and a lot of magazine and newspaper reading — was done in print,” he said in a phone interview. “I think we’re going to see that change now.”
It seems like everyone except Steve Jobs was underwhelmed by the Beatles on iTunes announcement today.
The reaction here, on other blogs, and on Twitter was unanimous: Who cares?
Most Beatles fans have already bought the CDs and added them to iTunes. The music is 40-50 years old. Half the band is dead.
Perhaps Apple overplayed it a bit, announcing that this was a day we’d never forget. Then it turned over the homepage, iTunes and Ping to The Beatles. There’s even four TV ads. Overkill? Maybe.
But seen from Steve Jobs’ point of view it is gotta be a big deal. Symbolically, at least. This is the day iTunes triumphed over the old music industry. It marks the complete obsolecence of the old distribution system and the triumph of the new.
The Beatles catalog was one of the last trump cards held by the old music industry. Giving it up is an admission that iTunes has prevailed. Music is fully digital, and there’s no going back. The other holdouts — AC/DC, Led Zeppelin Garth Brooks (CNet has a list here) — must surely follow.
Jobs has been working on this for seven years or more. To him, it’s a massive validation. Like he says, a day that won’t be forgotten.
Apple has finally approved the native Google Voice app after a 16 month delay.
Download it from iTunes here. It’s free, offers low-rate international calling and push notifications for new text or voicemail messages. It’s quicker than the HTML5 version, and has access to the iPhone’s contact list.
1. The lack of a SIM card slot (Verizon doesn’t use SIM cards)
2. A new external antenna design (Goodbye Antennagate)
3. The Verizon symbol in the upper left of the screen.
Wouldn’t it be great? But I call BS. The photo looks fake. It’s too good. Shots of prototypes are usually crappy. This looks too staged. I’ll bet it’s a Chinese knockoff.
NVIDIA has just announced a mid-range upgrade graphics card for the Mac Pro: the Quadro 4000 For Mac.
Aimed at workstation applications (video, graphics, scientific data crunching), the Quadro 4000 falls in the middle of NVIDIA’s professional lineup. It features NVIDIA’s latest Fermi architecture, boasting 256 CUDA cores and 2GB of GDDR5 memory.
But for a mid-range card, it’s pretty pricey: $1,199 when it ships later this month. The PC-compatible card is about $700. It shouldn’t take long for GPU hackers to create a Mac-compatible ROM. We’ll keep an eye out.
It’s Education Week on CultofMac.com. How’s Apple doing in schools these days? What are the best education apps? Is iTunes U worthwhile? Join us as we learn more about Apple in Education.
Computer scientist Alan Kay is one of the most foremost experts in computers in schools, and yet he believes technology in education has largely failed.
Kay is a pioneering computer scientist, a former Apple fellow, and famous for formulating the Dynabook concept that predicted laptops and tablets 40 years before they became commonplace. Kay was a researcher at Xerox PARC in the seventies on technologies that Apple later commercialized in the Lisa and Mac. Among many honors, Kay has won the prestigious Turing Award for work on object-oriented programming. During the mid-1980s he was an Apple Fellow at Apple’s Advanced Technology Group.
Computers have been in schools for the last 30 years, but with few exceptions, they haven’t been used to their full potential.
Kay says the education system has squandered 30 years of technology in classrooms. He likens the modern factory educatory system to a monkey with a microscope. The monkey looks at its reflection in the microscope’s barrel but doesn’t look through the eyepiece — it utterly misses the point.
Computers have become tools of distraction, Kay said, instead of education. He singles out Guitar Hero as the best example of this — players get the fantasy of virtuoso guitar playing without learning a single note.
“When I look at computers in schools, this is what I see. It’s all Guitar Hero,” he said during a keynote speech at CES earlier this year.
We asked Kay to expand on these ideas in this exclusive Q&A. Kay talks about the importance of using technology to create educated voters capable of participating in a democracy, and Apple’s general disinterest in education.
The consensus is that tomorrow’s big announcement isn’t streaming iTunes or anything to do with the cloud, but the Beatles finally coming to iTunes.
Look at the image above (via Techcrunch). Coincidence? Also, The Wall Street Journal and Billboard are reporting that the big announcement tomorrow is the Beatles on iTunes.
Says the WSJ:
Steve Jobs is nearing the end of his long and winding pursuit of the Beatles catalog.
Apple Inc. is preparing to announce that its iTunes Store will soon start carrying music by the Beatles, according to people familiar with the situation, a move that would fill in a glaring gap in the collection of the world’s largest music retailer.
Of course, the Beatles-on-iTunes rumor is as old as the hills. It was last aired in the run-up to Apple’s September 1st music-focused media event. Seems every time there’s an Apple event, it’s the Beatles.
Hard Candy’s iPad Stylus is an odd-duck product. It’s a stylus for a tablet that’s designed to be used with your finger. Like Steve Jobs said, “If you see a stylus, they blew it.”
But it’s actually pretty cool. I’ve got one, and I like it — even if I never use it.
I’m not alone. The Candy Pen iPad Stylus is already on its way to becoming a big hit.
Artist Michael Tompert takes Apple’s products and wrecks them with blowtorches, sledgehammers, handsaws and handguns. His large-scale prints of the detritus are surprisingly colorful and beautiful.
“It’s an alternate viewpoint,” explained Tompert at a preview of his first gallery show, which opens in San Francisco today. “They’re beautiful inside. They’re beautiful when you open them up.”
At a preview last weekend, Tompert’s three kids sat on the floor playing with iPhones and iPod touches underneath their father’s artwork. The irony was lost on no one. In fact, it’s our obsession with Apple’s products that Tompert is commenting on.
Feast your eyes on this beautiful gallery of Apple products destroyed in the name of art. The work is by artist Michael Tompert, whose show opens tonight in San Francisco. But you don’t have to be in California to enjoy the pictures. We have all 12 prints — plus detail shots — in the gallery below.
The photo above, called “Breathe,” shows a 2008 MacBook Air shot with a 9mm Heckler & Koch handgun.
Artist Michael Tompert, who’s first exhibit of Apple-inspired artwork opens today, tried to destroy an iPad by hitting it with a sledgehammer.
“I hit it with a sledgehammer about 10 times,” said Tompert at a preview of his art show, which opens today. “It did nothing. It’s incredible. It was really, really hard to destroy.”
Instead, Tompert took a blowtorch to the iPad.
“I had to blowtorch it for 15 minutes until the inside boiled and it exploded from inside,” said Tompert.
For the first time, U.S. music fans are streaming as much music as they download — and streaming is set to overtake downloading in a matter of months.
NPD Group says 30 percent of U.S. music consumers streamed music in August; the same percentage that downloaded music to their computers.
But streaming is growing fast. In a few months, it will far outstrip downloads, NPD Group spokesman Lee Martin told Evolver.fm.
Incredibly, the new numbers also include downloads from peer-to-peer file sharing networks as well as legal downloads from iTunes and Amazon.
Apparently, the convenience of streaming services, which now offer instant access to vast libraries of music of a wide variety of devices, even beats out piracy!
Good thing Apple has a $1 billion server farm coming online soon (if not already). But when are we going to see streaming from iTunes?
UPDATE: I go to dinner and all hell breaks loose. Sorry for the bogus info. My bad. I should have checked this out first. Apparently, this combo update is not good — it causes kernel panics. Here’s a legit link to the 10.6.5 combo update on Apple’s site: https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1324
Here’s the hidden URL where you can download the Mac OS X 10.6.5 Combo update. This combo update is not visible on Apple.com
Some folks think it’s usually better for your OS to install the combo update. From what we understand, the combo update does a more complete update than incremental updates applied through OS X’s Software Update. For example, system glitches caused by earier updates may be fixed because the combo update reinstalls everything that was included in previous updates (in this case, everything in 10.6.1 through 10.6.5).
It can also help avoid update headaches, we’re told.
Mophie's Juice Pack Air is certified by Apple, but Apple won't currently sell the slide-on battery pack in its retail stores because of "Glassgate." Photo by Kokkie76. Used with permission. http://bit.ly/aZD7on
Apple’s retail stores have suspended sales of iPhone 4 slide-on cases because of concerns about trapped dirt causing scratches and cracks — the so-called “Glassgate” issue.
The ban is impacting at least half-a-dozen case makers who expected to have a blockbuster holiday season, said a source who works in the case industry and asked for anonymity.
At least one manufacturer has hundreds of thousands of battery pack cases that have been suspended by Apple’s stores, despite being certified by Apple’s “Made for iPhone” program.
“Glassgate is a real problem,” said the source. “Apple is not approving slide-on cases right now for its stores.”
A new study also indicates that using web and desktop applications will significantly decrease battery life. In fact, in a stunning series of tests soon to be released, scientists have determined that simply running the computer would decrease the battery by up to 50X compared to keeping it in the ‘off’ or ‘standby’ mode. Scientists are looking for solutions to this problem. One five year old girl suggested plugging in some kind of ‘charging device’ to combat this threat. Fanboys quickly dismissed the idea as too simple and instead suggested purchasing multiple Macbooks and having an elaborate series of spares available at all times. Additionally, Apple suggests purchasing an AppleTV and an iPhone to make end users feel better.
In June 2008, on a flight home from Europe to San Francisco, I was given a fascinating demo of some jaw-dropping technology.
I was sitting next Inon Beracha, CEO of Israeli company PrimeSense, which had developed a low-cost chip and software to do 3D machine vision.
The system used a pair of cameras and an infrared sensor to highlight people and track their movements.
On his laptop, Beracha showed me videos of people waving their hands in the air to control Wii-like games. He showed people controlling TV programming menus by gesturing their hands in the air. And, most impressive of all, someone flipping through a photo slide show like they were Tom Cruise in Minority Report. It was so slick, I asked him if it was CGI. It was real, he said, and so cheap, the technology could eventually be found everywhere in the home, office and car.
Of course, PrimeSense’s system is at the heart of Microsoft’s new Kinect game controller, which is getting rave reviews and looks set to be a monster hit. It’s a “crazy, magical, omigosh rush,” says the New York Times‘ David Pogue.
Apple’s massive new data center is a 21st-century broadcasting system to rival the TV networks of old, says a leading expert in cloud computing.
Nick Carr, author of the “The Big Switch” a bestseller about the cloud, says Apple’s North Carolina facility is a “broadcasting system” not unlike NBC or CBS, but one that distributes software as well as media.
“Apple increasingly views its mainstream computers, from iPod Touch to iPhone to iPad to MacBook Air, as media players, with “media” spanning not just audio and video but also apps,” Carr wrote in an email. “From that perspective, the North Carolina data center can be seen as essentially a broadcasting system that will enable Apple to make the shift from a downloading model of media distribution to a streaming model. It’s a proprietary broadcasting system (not altogether unlike traditional broadcasting systems), which means it’s a very different model of the cloud from the open model promoted by Google.”
At 500,000 square feet, Apple’s $1 billion data center will be among the largest in the world. The unusual size of the data center suggests that Apple has ambitious plans for cloud computing.
It’s assumed it will be used to stream music and movies from iTunes. Reports suggest the company is going to build a big office complex next door and is “going after the cable market.”
But it goes deeper than that, says Carr. The facility will help transition Apple from a download model of computing to a streaming model of computing.
Here’s what else he had to say about Apple’s unique take on the cloud:
We’ve received a tip about an unexpected application for the NFC chip Apple is expected to build into the iPhone 5.
Near Field Communication (NFC) is a short-range wireless connection technology that would turn the iPhone into an electronic wallet or security passkey.
If the iPhone 5 does have NFC, applications like an eWallet are a no-brainer. But we’ve been told that Apple is also researching NFC for remote computing.
There’s been a lot of hoopla about magazine apps from the likes of Popular Science and Wired, which we reviewed favorably. But these standalone apps are doomed to failure, argues Web designer Khoi Vinh.
Stand-alone magazine apps appeal to publishers and their advertisers, but are totally at odds with the way users are interacting with their iPads, argues Vinh, who is famous for the celebrated redesign of the New York Times‘ site.
Take the recent release of the iPad app version of The New Yorker. Please. I downloaded an issue a few weeks ago and greatly enjoyed every single word of every article that I read (whatever the product experience, the journalism remains a notch above). But I hated everything else about it: it took way too long to download, cost me US$4.99 over and above the annual subscription fee that I already payfor the print edition and, as a content experience, was an impediment to my normal content consumption habits. I couldn’t email, blog, tweet or quote from the app, to say nothing of linking away to other sources — for magazine apps like these, the world outside is just a rumor to be denied. And when I plugged my iPad back into my Mac, the enormous digital heft of these magazines brought the synching process to a crawl.
Instead, Vinh said publishers should be looking to good, entertaining apps like EW’s Must List or Gourmet Live. “Neither of those are perfect,” writes Vinh. “But both actively understand that they must translate their print editions into a utilitarian complement to their users’ content consumption habits.”
What magazine apps have you guys seen that translate well to the iPad? Leave your suggestions in the comments.
Apple’s App Store has a lot of great software — the problem is finding it. With more than 250,000 apps to choose from, it’s hard to find the genuinely good software among thousands of substandard and me-too efforts. The star-rating system doesn’t work, and it’s easy to miss recommendations on sites like this one.
We’re pleased to announce a major new feature of the site: an app discovery and recommendation service powered by Mplayit’s App Tapp platform.
CultofMac’s App Finder helps you to find, share and discuss great apps. But the real power comes from signing in with your Facebook account. This allows you to get app recommendations from friends and colleagues. You can get also follow app experts, get personalized app recommendations, and share the apps you like with friends.
Using our App Finder is pretty self-explanatory, but here’s a brief tutorial showing how it works:
This is the third time the white iPhone has been pushed back: first to July, then the end of the year and now to next spring.
Once again, Apple didn’t explain the delay. In the past, the company has said the white iPhone was “more challenging to manufacture than we originally expected.”
