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.
A close review of the events that led to the controversial grant reveals that the backdating emerged from a good-faith, although clumsy, attempt by Apple’s board of directors to reward its star chief executive for resurrecting a moribund company.
The Merc’s story details a series of stock grants given to Jobs by Apple’s board between 1999 and 2003. The grants were often generous (and one was a record breaker) but because of fluctuations in Apple’s stock price, Jobs’ grants were often underwater. Several times, Jobs gave the underwater grants back, and the board gave him new ones.
However, according to the Merc, Jobs sometimes spent weeks negotiating the price of these new options, which affected their value. Jobs held out for the lowest price, and sometimes the board backdated the options to keep their price low.
The upshot is that neither Jobs nor the board were very good at picking the right number of options at the right price. If Jobs had simply kept all his grants, instead of constantly swapping them for new ones, they would be worth considerably more:
… Last year, Jobs handed back to Apple 4.6 million of his restricted shares – worth $295 million – to pay the taxes on them. His remaining restricted shares are now worth about $494 million.
But given the rise in Apple’s stock over the past four years, even that turned out to be a bad deal for the iconic CEO. Had he held on to all of his options, they would be worth about $4 billion right now, even if the 2001 grant had been given the December date.
Check out this bizarre video of a elderly woman in Moscow surfing the net on a brand new MacBook. It appears that the guys who shot the video were so surprised to see her, they tried to sneak a peek at her screen — but she shooed them off. Anyone speak Russian?
UPDATE: Olegs Straume writes:
Realy nice video
The guy wasn’t so nice to her – at first The guy in a black jacket says her “don’t worry i’ll just take a picture” than the man who is filming this scene says to his friend – “I think shee is watching some Porno” – “i’ll go and check” – when he got closer to her she answered “What? – Is it Interesting” ( Russians say that – when they are not so happy) – so the guy anwsered laughing “Sorry” on the way back he says “She was surfing”¦ (some kind of) “WISE SURFACE” (or something like that i didn’t hear well – thats it
NEW YORK, April 20 (Reuters) – When Apple sits for contract negotiations with the major record companies over the next month, it will probably seek further concessions from them on selling music without copy-protection software.
Big-box retailer Target is poised to become just the second third-party retailer to market Apple Inc.’s new Apple TV device at its brick-and-mortar retail stores, AppleInsider has learned.
While MP3 players are everywhere, and imitations of an Apple iPod Nano go for about $50 (a two gigabyte model with a larger screen than Apple (Charts, Fortune 500) offers), if you want the genuine article you’ll get fleeced. For an 80 gigabyte black iPod like one Amazon sells for $330, one salesman quotes me a price of about $700. As for PCs, Apple’s presence here is minimal.
Gartner pegs Apple’s current U.S. market share at 5 percent — a whopping 30 percent increase of the 4 percent figure estimated for the first quarter of 2006. According to the research firm, this makes Apple’s market share the fastest growing among PC vendors in the U.S, with Toshiba following closely at 26.8 percent growth. Dell, meanwhile, saw a 15.5 percent decrease in market share, though it retained its spot as top PC vendor in the U.S.
Sara Blask, staff writer at the Iceland Review, lost her iPod in the parking lot of Iceland’s maximum security prison in a town called Litla Hraun. It was found and returned her. The story’s a little convoluted, and it doesn’t explain how a white iPod was found in the snow, but basically:
“Turns out his mom works at Litla Hraun and found the iPod amidst snow and garbage in the prison’s parking lot. After a couple weeks no one claimed it, so she gave it to her son (the one who emailed me), who charged it up and saw that it was called “Sara Blask.” He plugged my name into Google, found my website, and emailed me.”
Actually, more interesting is the Iceland Review site, which is nicely designed and full of great photography. I love how the site is so white. Very Icelandic.
(Via TUAW)
Accessory makers must be predicting a bonanza of iPod proportions for the iPhone — Japanese case makers are already rolling out protective cases for the iPhone, due in late June.
On show at a Japanese electronics and components fair; a rubbery prophylactic, a see-through hard case and a faux-sneaker design.
There are 4,000 accessories for the iPod, a market worth at least $1 billion a year.
Owners of a shiny new AppleTV who are also fans of obscure foreign TV shows like Life on Mars or Doctor Who Series 3 might be interested in VisualHub.
VisualHub is a $23 video converter that transforms popular BitTorrent formats (DivX, XviD, AVI, all forms of MPEG) to MP4 format — which play nice on the AppleTV or video iPods.
VisualHub can batch process files and automatically add them to iTunes. It offers encoding up to 720p and claims to be much faster than QuickTime Pro.
For Windows users, there’s Videora AppleTV Converter, a free video converter designed especially for the AppleTV.
When combined with Videora, a file search and download program, video can be automatically found, downloaded and converted for the AppleTV using BitTorrent and RSS, according to the site. This must be the killer app for AppleTV — if it works. I’m downloading it right now to find out.
Apple’s executives raked it in last year, and Steve Jobs took his customary $1 in salary.
According to an SEC filing reported by Marketwatch:
“¢ Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer realized $56 million in value from the exercise of options during 2006. Oppenheimer also received a $615,000 salary, a $450,000 bonus and restricted stock valued at $14 million.
“¢ Chief Operating Officer Timothy D. Cook received restricted stock valued at $22 million, a salary of $697,000 and a $525,000 bonus for 2006.
“¢ Jobs has received the majority of his compensation through an equity grant and isn’t eligible for a bonus, according to Monday’s filing. He doesn’t receive any other compensation, the company said.
Thomas Fitzgerald spent some quality time with his AppleTV and wrote up this thorough and interesting review. His conclusion? It’s a great product, well thought out and executed.
It is the Apple TV’s integration with iTunes that makes it a truly fantastic product. Again it’s the little things. When you watch something on your iPod, and then sync it, it knows your playback position. When you watch a podcast, (if you set it to sync only recent episodes) it removes it and sends the next episode (but cleverly it waits till you have watched it to the end before it does so) Synching seems to happen often and as soon as you change something it will sync. It’s pretty impressive and seamless. Another cool thing is that if you have slideshows set up in iPhoto when you sync your photos it remembers the music you had set with that slide show. I know it’s simple little thing, but it just struck me as being indicative of the seamless integration across all Apple’s products, that competitors just can’t or don’t want to achieve.
…Even if you live outside the US and don’t have access to movies and TV shows on iTunes there are plenty of ways to get content onto the Apple TV. Two must have pieces of software are mediafork (aka handbrake) and visual hub. Visual hub does an excellent job of transcoding all those divx movies you may have acquired through whatever method you may have acquired them (and I’ll make no comment or suggestions on that topic) with no significant loss in quality, which is a pretty impressive feat. Media fork does a similar job with DVDs.
The record companies are selling more and more music online, but they’re paying scant attention to digital packaging: there’s no good album covers for online music.
That’s the conclusion of Adrian Shaughnessy at Design Observer, who’s spent the last few months researching online alternatives to album art. And unfortunately, there aren’t any.
As downloading threatens to become the main distribution method for recorded music, it is widely believed that the album cover will be replaced by some new online format perhaps animated that will make CD packaging redundant. Well, I might be missing something, but I’ve found nothing in the digital arena that offers a viable alternative to a well-designed CD or vinyl album cover. Instead, I’ve discovered a grim-faced resistance movement amongst dozens of tiny record labels determined to hang onto physical packaging and expressive cover art, no matter what.
CoverFlow in iTunes — which displays a JPEG of the album when a song is playing — is a start. The artwork is static and there’s no lyrics or band bios, but the artwork certainly helps navigate the music collection. It also makes the music feel like a collection, rather than just a bunch of files.
There are signs that the record companies are looking at iTunes and the iPod as a platform for designers to play with.
George White, Warner Music Group’s senior VP of strategy and product development, put together a digital packaging demo for Apple to re-imagine album artwork as more than a JPEG on an iPod.
“We’ve been looking at a few technologies (for digital album art), and have been trying to bring these to Apple, to encourage them to bring that level of experience to the iPod,” says White. “A very simple demonstration that we’ve done takes the Gnarls Barkley liner notes and does a fly-through (using Adobe Flash Lite). You’re actually moving through the lyrics and artwork. It’s sort of like a theme park ride through the album. It’s really, really cool-looking on an iPod.”
(Apple did not respond to questions about whether it’s considering any of Warner Music Group’s suggestions.)
White also pointed to Warner’s Wamo pack, which gave Japanese cell phone users digital albums with ringtones, video, full tracks and artist interviews. Wamo packs aren’t new — they launched overseas a year ago. But White says Warner plans to produce more of these bundles. He also mentioned that while Wamo packs use Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language, or SMIL, for their interactive menus, Adobe’s Flash Lite would be a better candidate for “the level of sophistication people expect from Warner Music Group’s artists.”
(Adobe confirmed that Warner’s iPod/Flash Lite demonstrations had taken place, but said that the company “has not announced any joint plans for Flash or Flash Lite to be used in next-generation digital albums.”)
Apple persuaded the Coen Brothers — creators of some of my favorite flicks — to talk it up. The shilling is a bit tiresome though. The Final Cut show reel is better fun.
After pricing everything out, I decided to build a single mono channel to see how it sounded. $100 for the amp, $100 for the speaker parts, $100 for wood (real oak, just couldn’t use that compressed saw dust stuff). I ordered the parts and went to work. After about two weeks of working in the evenings this is what I came up with.
… Even though it is monaural, the sound is unbelievable. I thought about building the second channel, but so far I’m happy with this.
The Dayton III is a 2-way, dual woofer loudspeaker using the Dayton 6-1/2″ paper cone woofer and 1-1/8″ silk dome tweeter. These drivers have been the subject of a lot of discussion on the Parts Express Tech Talk board because they are among the “best bang for the buck” in low price loudspeaker drivers. This woofer is able to produce exceptionally low bass for a given box size and the tweeter produces clean, clear highs. When you hear these speakers you won’t believe that the total cost for drivers and crossover components is under $150/PAIR!
The New York Times has a roundup of three vacuum tube amplifiers for the iPod:
BOTH the Cocoon and the Fatman come with a pair of white cotton gloves, to be worn to protect the high-gloss metal surfaces from fingerprints during handling. To assemble and try out both machines, I donned a set of the gloves, as did a friend who helped me.
There’s several new screenshots lighting up the internet that are purportedly taken from a new Leopard build (9A410).
Posted to Hackintosh, MacRumors, Flickr and elsewhere, the screenshots show a new, simple UI that’s darker and sharper than the current — note the corners of windows are no longer rounded. There’s less brushed metal, more soothing grey.
The screenshots on Flickr look much more like the current UI (Tiger) ,except Mail now has a metallic look.
But there’s something fishy about them. The interface is too plain and stripped back.
Many on the MacRumors’ forums think the screens are fake, and one poster on Flickr is sure about it.:
“Fake! Fake! Fake!
I write themes for OSX. And, I can tell you how this was most probably done:
The file Extras.rsrc still kinda works in the betas for 10.5 although, I hope that it will be removed before release.
Anyway, Installer based themes (though out of favor in 10.4) still work by replacing Extras.rsrc among other files.
Someone swapped out the normal Extras.rsrc and took some screen shots. Since most of the guts of 10.5 do not depend upon Extras.rsrc anymore, I am confident that 10.5 would run with a 10.4 Extras file for now.
Note that you do not see any signs of resolution independence! That is what would break this fake theme (since res independence calls to images not stored in Extras.rsrc).”
Apple faithful, I sense a disturbance in the force. I feel … fear. Worry. Anger. Faithful, put aside these negative feelings. The OS is fine. The iPhone is fine. Everything is fine. We are taking a little extra time, that’s all. I’m sure you’re receiving taunts from your Windows-loving friends talking about “OS X Leper.” I’ve been taunted too. Bill Gates just called and offered to send over a team to help us port Vista features into Leopard.
Faithful, do not lose heart. I’ve chosen the photo above to help you re-hypnotize yourselves. Look directly into my eyes, not around the eyes, but into the eyes. Now think of products. Glossy white products that cost too much money and make you feel superior to other people. Feel better? Good. Me too.
Wilkes University Wilkes-Barre, PA, is about to become one of the first colleges to make a complete switch from Windows PCs to new Intel Macs. Over the next three years, Wilkes will become an all-Mac campus — a $1.4 million switch involving 1,700 computers. The reason? To save money. The college will buy fewer machines and expects to spend less on support.
Scott Byers, vice president for finance and general counsel at Wilkes, answered a few questions by email, explaining the reason for the switch and the reaction from students and staff.
“Students seem to like the change and recognize Apple as an innovator in technology,” he said. “This generation of students has a great affinity for the Apple brand.”
Whose idea was it to switch to Macs?“¨The idea was generated as we solicited bids for our annual technology refresh program. Every three years we replenish all 1,700 computers on campus. Apple introduced us to their Intel-based Macs and we saw it as an opportunity to provide Apple and Windows operating systems in one machine for the campus community. The benefits to the end user were obvious. Students and faculty could choose the platform they needed and wanted based on their individual computing needs. We also saw an opportunity to reduce the number of machines on campus and therefore create more efficient use of computer labs. We soon realized the question wasn’t ‘why make the switch,’ but ‘why not?’
Was there any resistance?ҬWe are an institution whose mission is to establish personal relationships so we worked closely with our faculty and staff to make sure we had a general consensus in moving forward with Apple.
Your stated reason was to save money. Were there any other advantages or disadvantages?ҬBeing more efficient was a desire but we felt it had many other advantages;
1) Allowed the user to choose the desired operating system
2) offered the potential to enhance teaching and learning using Apple’s iLife software
3) created a standard base that our IT department could work with consistently rather than Dells, Gateways, HP and Apples
4) reduced the number of units necessary for campus and the number of units requiring potential service and replacement.
What was the reaction to the news like from staff and students?ӬStudents seem to like the change and recognize Apple as an innovator in technology. This generation of students has a great affinity for the Apple brand. Staff have embraced the change as well. We anticipate additional support from the campus community by providing training on the educational benefits of Apple software.
A couple of years ago, universities and schools were switching away from Macs. Do you think we’ll see more switch back?“¨I think so. Apple has made inroads in the personal computer market with an operating system that one could argue is superior to Windows. The switcher approach allows campuses to access both platforms from one unit. Again, I would pose the question why wouldn’t a campus make the switch? The visual, user-friendly nature of Apple-based programs, along with iTunes and other lifestyle programs, has aligned well with the current and incoming generation of college students.
Any additional comments?
I’d like to add that Wilkes has long been a leading provider of graduate education for teachers. We offer master’s degree and certificate programs in classroom technology and instructional technology. At the core of those programs is an emphasis on computer skills and also leadership skills so teachers can implement crucial technology upgrades in their respective schools.
Our partnership with Apple will be a vital part of providing cutting-edge, quality education in the way of instructional technology for today’s teachers.
Filings discovered today by AppleInsider and noted on April 5th at the US Patent and Trademark Office show that Apple Corps has given up more of the trademarks associated with The Beatles’ own company than was expected as part of the landmark settlement in February… (Steve Jobs’ Apple Inc.) received the rights to use imagery virtually inseparable from Apple Corps’ music business, including the centerpiece green apple and two variants with the fruit cut in half.
I love these cameras (I’ve bought three more since January as gifts, with great results). They shoot stunning pictures (here’s Flickr’s collection of FX07 shots) and have totally kick-ass image stabilization that works great in low-light, getting me incredible shots without using a tripod or leaning the camera against a table. They also shoot wicked-fast, making it easy to shoot a continuous stream of photos of something exciting as it’s happening. The presets are also really smart — the aerial photography setting got great shots when I was in a helicopter last month over the Grand Canyon. The camera also shoots crisp, 640×480 Quicktime video.
The world’s biggest music companies are expected to ask Apple to introduce a music subscription service to its iTunes digital media store as part of negotiations to renew their agreements with the computer company.
There are at least five problems the Apple TV alone cannot solve for the iTunes Store:
3. Access: At present, there is no option to rent movies on the iTunes Store, and, unlike music purchases versus subscription services, renting movies is a preferred method of consuming content. Further, purchasing movies through the iTunes Store still requires a computer, rather than direct shopping using the touted Apple TV.
If Apple is even remotely thinking about offering iTunes Store subscriptions for its music, I really hope they don’t – and instead apply the subscription model to iTunes Movies instead.
TVShows is a free, open source application that triggers automatic downloading of TV shows via BitTorrent.
Working in conjunction with a BitTorrent client, the application manages show subscriptions. Favorite shows are automatically downloaded in the background whenever they become available online.
Most BitTorrent video is encoded in DivX or .AVI formats, and will play fine in a media player like VLC, but if you want to stream it to an AppleTV, you will need to convert the shows — or hack the AppleTV to support DivX and other formats.
VMware Fusion Beta 3 now supports Apple’s Boot Camp. VMware Fusion is virtualization software that allows Windows XP to be run at the same time as OS X (It doesn’t yet support Vista).
VMware Fusion automatically detects your Boot Camp partition, so you can now run a Windows XP virtual machine from your existing Boot Camp partition. You no longer have to choose Windows or Mac: you can now run Windows side-by-side with your favorite Mac applications. Note: For this Beta 3 release, Windows Vista is not supported; only Windows XP is supported.
Two news nuggets suggest the Beatles catalog is getting close to release online:
Yesterday Reuters reported that Neil Aspinall, the long-time head of Apple Corps., had stepped aside:
A combative, media-shy executive fiercely protective of the Beatles’ legacy and Apple Corps Ltd., Aspinall kept busy in recent years waging a legal battle against computer company Apple Inc. over their similar logos.
A bigger issue was the Beatles’ noted refusal to license tunes to online retailers, such as the technology firm’s iTunes store….
His slow-and-sensible approach to the band’s affairs paid off in the 1980s when compact discs were introduced. He refused to join the rush, and held out for a higher royalty rate. The band’s crowning moment, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band,” finally came out on CD in 1987, amid a worldwide publicity blitz marking the album’s 20th anniversary.
Aspinall was also the main reason why Beatles tracks are not heard on multi-artist compilation CDs, because he said they cheapened the band’s image.
On Thursday Reuters reported Apple Corps. settled a long-running royalty dispute with EMI:
The company representing The Beatles has settled a 30 million-pound ($59 million) royalty dispute with EMI Group, in a deal that could finally pave the way for the Liverpool band’s music to go online… “It seems like it is heading in that direction,” Jupiter analyst Mark Mulligan told Reuters of the Beatles catalogue. “The conversation has changed from an ‘if’ to a ‘when’.
