Nicole Martinelli is a San Francisco freelance writer who heads up Cult of Mac Magazine, our weekly publication available on iTunes. You can find her on Twitter and Google+. If you're doing something new, cool and Apple-related, email her.
The iPhone is a great travel tool, but making your smartphone travel actually smart isn’t about packing it up with dozens of apps you never use or that won’t get you out of the plane seat next to the loo on a crowded holiday flight.
Enter Cult of Mac Magazine. In time for your holiday travels (or maybe escaping from your loved ones for some beach or ski resort time?), we sounded out dozens of road warriors to learn what they really find necessary for the daily commute or continental flight. These black tees and easy-to-launder socks of the app world, if you will, include some surprising picks, many of them free.
If your travel is mostly of the four-wheel variety, you’ll want to read what happens when reporter Alex Heath took smart-driving app Automatic for a month-long spin. (Can it reform his gas guzzling, donut-making driving style?)
In our exclusive Ask an Apple Genius column, we answer your questions about how to get your Mac repaired on the road and how to handle assistance when you live in a town without an Apple store.
You’ll also find our picks for the best in apps this week and what’s really rocking the iTunes store when it comes to books, movies and music.
I don’t get around much anymore. After moving back to San Francisco from Milan a couple of years ago, most of my jaunts are to and from the Cult of Mac offices in the Mission, which is exactly 3.8 miles from my house. I know the precise distance thanks to Google Maps, which I consult in oracle-like fashion on my computer (and iPhone) since it tends to accurately predict how much misery the trip will involve at any particular time.
At first, determined to take public transportation, I downloaded NextBus, the transit app tasked with telling riders when, you know, the next bus will trundle along to the corner stop. It worked well, until it didn’t (NextBus: 13 minutes. 10 minutes later, it’s 19 minutes. Then it’s 13 minutes again) and the capriciousness of it pushed me into buying a secondhand Vespa. Now I simply calculate whether it’s worth slaloming in traffic or sliding down the less-trafficked hills to get to work.
Starved for adventure, when the chance came to go to Hong Kong, I loaded up my iPhone with paid guidebooks, magazines, maps and a dictionary or two. (When I first hit the States, my phone was a Nokia whose sole killer application – and it was pretty great – were those pre-loaded maps.) I even went a little app-happy, causing my Visa card to trip the “possible fraud” alert due to iTunes purchases.
What did I actually use on the trip? None of the stuff I paid for. Evernote (free version) held all the tips from people about navigating the fragrant harbor — including the address for Shoeman Lau, where I got some beautiful kicks — and every single branch of Din Tai Fung for a daily dumpling fix.
The free, English version of the Metro app is geared towards tourists and proved key for trip planning, maps and general sightseeing. Google Maps helped locate places for restoration during the most strenuous shopping trips. Hootsuite (also the free version) let me communicate with my travel partners when we got separated through direct messages over Twitter. And the free restyled version of the Associated Press app was about all I had time for in terms of reading material.
If you’re like me, you hate buying stuff that you don’t use — and can’t even pass along to someone who might be interested in a Cantonese-English dictionary thanks to those DRM shackles.
In view of the upcoming holidays — and maybe a beach or ski vacation to recover from all that enforced family time? — we sounded out dozens of people who travel extensively for a living to find out what they cannot live with out on their iPhones as they navigate domestic and international trips.
Cult of Mac Magazine wants to get you on the right track for giving good gifts in 2013.
It happens to all of us. There’s a time when “thanks” is as hollow as a fuzzy stocking on December 26. That half-hearted “you shouldn’t have!” that comes out when you have just given (or received) a total dud for a gift. You don’t like it. You certainly don’t need it. Or maybe you aren’t even sure what it’s for, like that InstaSlim compression shirt. So the item in question gets shoved under a growing mountain of gift paper that the recipient (perhaps) hopes goes into the recycling bin, never to be seen again.
Here’s where we come in. Our stellar reviews editor, Charlie Sorrel, has momentarily put aside his bah-humbugging to trawl through all the best items that he has attached, stuffed or otherwise prodded his iGadgets with this year to get down to the essentials. He’s got the goods on what you need to buy for all of your devices – and, yeah, while you’re at it, your loved ones’ devices, too.
You’ll also read about how publisher Leander Kahney earned the reputation for being the worst gift giver in his entire family and get the real deal on how to get better deals on Apple products with our exclusive “Ask A Genius” column.
This week in Cult of Mac Magazine: how some collectors are making serious money with old Macs.
Well, that and how some are discovering that it may be sentimental value that keeps the old machines humming – as it turns out for our publisher, Leander Kahney, who reminisces on the antiquated machines in his life.
And if you dream of finding an Apple 1 or coming across a Twiggy Mac and making a pretty penny, we’ll tell you what happens when those machines roar back to life and come up at auctions.
We’ll also help you figure out what to keep – and toss! – in your collection and showcase some of the coolest ways Apple lovers have repurposed those aging computer carcasses to give them new life.
Our Apple Genius dishes on how to keep your privates protected when you bring your machine in (it’s not as hard as you think) and the best way to let your technician know you’re not a total moron – so you can get your device fixed and get out as soon as possible.
Sure, those old computational machines are making some collectors serious new money. But love of Apple doesn’t always translate into hard cash.
Over the years, we’ve covered a lot of cool things to do with your obsolete – but still near and dear! — Apple gear.
Here are some of our favorites.
Art
The museum-worthy design of Apple devices has inspired a number of artists over the years. The smashed iPhones above and below by Ryan McIntosh were part of an art exhibit about Apple called “Programmed” that debuted in Brooklyn. The curators hoped to invite “discussion on recycling, the history of these items..” and to get people thinking about “the fetishizing of these electronics that are then discarded.”
If paint is more your medium, check out the work of Satta van Dahl, whose colorful portraits of Steve Jobs and Woz on early Macs are truly iconic.
“After Ansel Adams and Edward Weston” by Ryan McIntosh.
iPad Stand
Repurposing your old computer to hold a new device is one of the best ways to keep the people you live with off your back for collecting too much stuff. If you’re ready to tackle one of these projects some long, dreary weekend, more details on how-to here.
Pet Bed
Take the innards out of your old iMac, add some cushioning and voila’: a stylish yet cozy home for your cat or doggy.
CC-licensed, thanks monicaewagner on Flickr.
iMac Base as Desk Lamp
Creator Nicolas didn’t tell hardmac exactly how he did it, but did say it was easy:
“I decided to recycle my old iMac G4. With some spare parts, one can easily transform it into a nice lamp fully articulated thanks to the famous arm.”
Another illuminating idea courtesy Apple.
Macquarium
This is nearly as classic a DIY project as the computers it uses to house the fishes. If you’re ready to swim with the big boys, try the how-to in low-end Mac.
iMac G4 as Clock
Though the 2002 iLamps were declared “obsolete” by Apple in 2009, the re-purposed stainless steel base plate of this iMac G4 makes a nice wall clock. It’s the handiwork of a Japanese Apple fan, who published a step-by-step DIY project.
Have you ever looked around your garage or spare bedroom and thought: “There’s enough Apple stuff here to start a museum?”
That’s pretty much what happened to Adam Rosen, who runs the Vintage Mac Museum, a private collection of all working machines, out of his Boston-area home. (Take a peek at his prized pieces in the gallery in this edition.)
The certified Apple consultant and Cult of Mac contributor on all things vintage gave us the skinny on what to do with your burgeoning collection: what to toss, what to hunt for on eBay and what to beg your significant other to let you keep.
Cult of Mac: Since 2009 when the Apple 1s started resurfacing the prices have gone from under $20,000 between private collectors to over $300,000 at Christie’s – any thoughts on whether this is having any effects on the general market for Apple collectibles?
Adam Rosen: Apple 1 prices have been unreal, they’ve sold as high as $670k! This has definitely had an effect on the size of the market for Apple collectibles, expanding it significantly. The effect on value is more variable.
For rare items and prototypes, value has definitely gone up. If you have a prototype clear case Macintosh SE, yeah, that’s gonna interest people. But there were a lot of Apple IIs and Macs manufactured. With so many more people aware of the prices of rare Apple systems the market gets flooded with common models. A Mac Plus today is only worth about $100, even if it’s been in the attic for 20 years.
CoM: A few years back, you said the size of a collection depends on what the person you live with will tolerate – does that still stand? Is there stuff you’ve decided to sell or give away that you were previously holding on to?
AR: That definitely still stands. I’ve been contacted more than once by fellow collectors whose significant other has decided that it is Time for Things to Go, and they are willing to offer me a good deal!
I’m currently single – which lessens pressure from others to shed possessions – but it’s still necessary to purge occasionally in order to reclaim living space.
CoM: You have also said that the original 128K Macintosh is always desirable, does that still stand?
AR: That is still true, and the value has increased. A working 128k Mac is currently worth $750-1,000, one with an original box and packaging can command double that. Vintage Mac prices spiked after Steve Jobs passed away, they’ve come down since but the first model will always be desirable.
CoM: If taking up space with old computers is a problem – what smaller collectibles are worth having?
AR: Funny you should ask that, as my collection has expanded I’ve become more interested in smaller promotional and marketing items. They cost less and look nice next to other equipment. Few are investment worthy yet, but collectively they have some value.
Original Apple marketing schwag is always desirable – posters, pins, buttons. Store display banners are prized, though these can be large. “Think Different” posters are nice but still fairly common – buy a set and hold on to those. Items signed by Steve Jobs are highly valuable; things by Woz not as much, since he has signed so much. Apple clothing, manuals and stationary don’t really command much value.
CoM: What’s the most prized piece in your collection and why? How has that changed over the years?
AR: This has definitely changed over the years. I have a Mac Plus where the back and one side have been replaced with plexiglass to show off an internal hard drive upgrade. This isn’t a translucent prototype, more like a working “cutaway drawing” of the Macintosh. It’s a very unique piece.
I recently bought a 128k Mac with original packaging, I’ve wanted one of those for some time. It’s a must-have for any serious Mac collector.
I’m also a big fan of the Picasso-style artwork. Last year I bought one of those lighted Macintosh logo dealer signs which Apple supplied for the Mac’s introduction. These are gorgeous, I love turning it on and looking at the light reflect inside the engraved glass.
CoM: Any thoughts or advice on finding or buying prototypes? That last Christie’s auction also had that clear cased SE, for example…
AR: eBay is probably the most likely place to find prototypes, it’s the biggest worldwide marketplace. Craigslist can also be a good place to find old tech, especially in the larger cities. Of course, knowing people who once worked at Apple never hurts!
Prototypes of products nobody cared about may not be worth anything. For example, nobody is looking for a developmental Apple III system. But if you can find an unshipped Apple tablet prototype from the 1980s or 90s, grab it.
By the time things show up at Christie’s you know you’re not going to be getting a bargain! I don’t know how much that clear SE actually sold for, I think the last bid I saw was $5,000. That’s still a lot more than a standard SE, which sells in the $100 range.
Price info from auction houses; view sources here.
The very first computer Apple ever made has all the hallmarks of a valuable collectible: scarcity, novelty and impracticality.
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak cobbled together about 200 of them in a Los Altos garage in the late 70s. (That garage is now slated to become an historical destination.) The Apple 1 cost $666.66 and the pioneers of home computing who bought it had to add their own case, keyboard, video display and power supply to actually use it.
Those machines seemed to be largely forgotten on the larger resale market until 2009, when the economic squeeze made collectors realize those humble-looking relics could morph into serious cash.
The auction escalation for these machines began slowly, with a tech journalist telling the seller of the first one of the bunch to crop up on eBay that “I don’t think your computer is valuable enough to spark much general media interest,” but that a small following of avid collectors would be enough to start a “bidding war.”
Not exactly: that first machine earned its owner $18,000, about $2,000 over the top sum the journalist thought it might fetch. Not bad, but not enough to pay off your mortgage, like the ones selling for around $300,000 just a few years later.
Very few of these iconic homespun machines work – those that can still crunch the cassette interface are worth a lot more, so are those that come with the collateral, including the original box and typed letters on binder paper from a young man who signed himself Steven Jobs. (Watch Wendell Sander, Apple employee no. 16, fire up his Apple 1 for a memory dump using an iPod in our video.)
Since that first auction, media interest has soared. And so have the prices. Once the large auction houses got involved, the prices levitated to a record $671,000 for a working Apple 1 this year.
“I do feel that some of the recent auction prices attained for the Apple 1 are absurd,” Dag Spicer, senior curator of the Computer History Museum told Cult of Mac. The Mountain View, California home to calculating curios holds over 100,000 items, most of them donated, including two Apple 1s. “The death of Steve Jobs and Apple’s ascendancy as the world’s most valuable company has something to do with it.”
There are a few signs that the trend won’t keep climbing. The New York Times reported that an Apple 1 on the auction block in London failed to meet its $75,000 reserve price and another one sold for $375,000 instead of the $500,000 Christie’s expected. The most recent auction in Germany closed without a single bid — though the Apple 1 fetched about $330,000 after the last gavel sounded.
The friendly atmosphere – and the amateur collector-friendly prices – stopped when the auction houses realized that there was plenty of new money to be had with old circuits.
“Auction houses exist to maximize profit for the seller (and thus themselves as they get a hefty commission),” Spicer said. “The effect this has is (in my opinion) to inflate the monetary value of objects. Auction houses live on what early 20th-century circus barkers called ‘ballyhoo’ — they whip up emotions with arresting curatorial text and glossy catalogs in order to create a sense of magic and uniqueness about an object. And, of course, the auction process itself, in which passionate, well-heeled buyers compete against each other, itself serves to raise prices.”
Still, if you want to dig into garage and estate sales seeking a mother lode in a motherboard, you might want to keep Mike Willegal’s site bookmarked. Willegal tends an online registry that has positively ID’d 48 Apple 1s and warns that reproductions are getting harder to tell from the originals. Willegal says owners may be in good faith but cautions: “If you are in the market for an original Apple 1, be extremely careful about what you are investing in.”
And it pays to watch prices, Computer History Museum’s Spicer says: “I have seen an Apple 1 selling for $75K in the last year… so to that buyer who spent 500,000 Euro on one…well, ooops! Lesson: Do your homework!”
If you want to get a feel for the book, check out this excerpt over at Medium, which is richly illustrated with sketches and photographs of some of the prototypes.
The Medium excerpt is how Leander wanted to originally write the book; illustrated with all the images leaked during the initial Samsung vs. Apple trial. We’ve seen the prototypes all over the web. What is missing, though, is the journalist’s most important tool: context. This treatment pairs the pictures with the details of Apple’s design process.
We’ve dedicated this issue of the magazine to Sir Jony Ive, the Apple designer whose imagination brings us all the gadgets we love.
Inside, you’ll find an exclusive excerpt from publisher Leander Kahney’s brand-spanking-new book “Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products” along with the story of how Leander met Ive for the first time. (It turns out Jony is nice, especially to forgetful reporters.) The book excerpt takes you back to where it all began: in the UK where a young Jony started working with his father in the garage.
As we do every week, we also bring you the best in new apps, picks from what’s worth your while in books, music and movies in iTunes and our exclusive Apple genius column delves into getting hired and what to do if you happen to find love while getting your iPhone repaired.
Keep the feedback coming — we’re listening!
This post contains affiliate links. Cult of Mac may earn a commission when you use our links to buy items.
One of two "Apple" bags found in the Ladies Market. @Nicole Martinelli for Cult of Mac.
Once I started iSpying in the crowded, bustling streets of Hong Kong, it was hard to stop. (Also, the IP lawyers must be seriously busy in these parts.)
These are some of my favorite finds of Apple-esque products and signs — minus the pics that didn’t turn out because my travel companions were trying to stop me from lagging behind or getting run over.
We’ll have more reporting from Hong Kong soon; a special thanks goes out to Truman Au for showing me around.
Drumming up iBusiness on Nathan Road in Hong Kong.
I’m still a little woozy from the 14-hour plane ride from San Francisco, but at first glance this humming tech hub seems like Samsung territory.
For every 10 Galaxy Notes that metro riders are stumbling down the endless escalators watching TV shows or reading comics on, I’ve probably spotted one iPhone.
Thanks to its brilliant touchscreen, the iPhone put a sketchpad in our hands and then the iPad gave us a little more room to doodle. Just a few years on, mobile art has graced the cover of The New Yorker and been hung on the walls of traditional museums.
This issue explores the landscape of mobile art – we profile a host of iArtists on how they bring their work into the real world, take a close look at David Hockney’s iPad works writ large at the de Young Museum in San Francisco and give you tips on how to power up your mobile toolkit with tips on styluses, apps and more.
We also bring you the best in new apps, picks from what’s worth your while in books, music and movies in iTunes and our exclusive Apple genius column delves into skirting the store’s EasyPay option and how to escalate to a manager if you need to.
Do you draw, paint, or create fine art with your iPad? Let us know in the comments.
This post contains affiliate links. Cult of Mac may earn a commission when you use our links to buy items.
It’s easy to think of David Scott Leibowitz, whose work fronts this week’s magazine cover, as kind of a renaissance man 2.0: the artist, app developer and author is a tireless champion of the new when it comes to visual arts.
Matthew Watkins spends a lot of time fingerpainting, but has also brought his handiwork into the real world on carpets, cars, plexiglass and the more usual prints.
He caught our eye in 2009, when his one-man show went up in an Apple reseller, the first of its kind. His early playful works seemed to dance across the iPad screen or knowingly frame scenes of daily life with his iPhone. Watkins lives in Southern Italy – by way of England and Canada – and has recently been involved in iPad art mash-ups and live fashion shows in Manchester, England and Florence, Italy. He’s also a founding board member of iAMDA (The International Association of Mobile Digital Artists).
We caught up with him to find out what apps have taken over his toolkit, why you should think big when it comes to printing and how he’ll be picking up a shovel for inspiration near Verona, Italy.
Watkins fingerpainting live in Verona, Italy.
Cult of Mac: What have you been up to lately?
Matthew Watkins: 2013 was a year full of travel and fingerpainting, new technology and new collaborations.
In February, I worked on a multi-discipline project with the 154 Collective. I was invited to participate on their two Manchester dates at the Lowry theatre. It consisted of an exhibition, theatrical production (for which we provided collaborative finger painted animations) and concert with live collaborative projected fingerpainting featuring Fabric Lenny,Benjamin Rabe and myself…
March was my biggest show so far. I was given a one-man exhibition at the Verona Natural Science Museum called “Uncontainable Art.”
The show was coordinated by the University of Verona in concurrence with the yearly science event “Infinitamente” (Infinitely) which showcases a new artist every year…It figured four works about three meters high and about 40 medium 50x70cm pieces.
I kicked it off with two days of workshops. It was great to be in such an old institution in an old city. The show ran through June and counted about 15,000 visitors.
“Fossilized robot swimming in chewing gum.” Matthew Watkins.
CoM: These robotic fossils are a new thing for you. How did that get started?
MW: I was shown the museums collection of fossils from Bolca. It’s the largest collection in the world. Bolca is a very small area about the size of a fair sized pub. A geological fluke of nature with stacked a motherlode of perfectly preserved fossils with unprecedented biodiversity.
Fish fossils have inspired me since I was a child, but this was over the top. I worked on my robotic fish fossils for a couple of months. First I started with robotic fish, then I inserted common everyday elements, including a broken iPhone 3g. Imagining a distant fossilized robotic future juxtaposed with our culture. Maybe 50 to 100 million years from now.
Then a funny thing happened. I got a phone call from the head of the fossil collection at the museum. I went back to Verona and we chatted for two hours about fossils and art. He explained all about the strange origin of the Bolca fossils, and I explained what I was thinking. T
The deeper we got into it the more it seemed like a scientific/artistic collaboration. I had just made stuff up. He told me under what conditions things fossilize and how they might be preserved. For example, a jellyfish is 99% water, but in the right conditions it will fossilize and even retain some of its color.
So I am invited back in November to participate in some digs. I will dig for fossils and inspiration. I hope to be given some samples of Bolca rock from which to make to make my own real, robotic, fossils.
“The White Crow.” @Matthew Watkins.
CoM: What else are you currently working on?
MW: Other than the fossils I am painting imaginary cities. I am fascinated by urban decay and architectural artifacts.
CoM: What new tools or apps are you using?
MW: My favorite painting app is by far Procreate by Savage Interactive. It has a perfect painting engine, amazing brushes, awesome resolution and as of recently video playback. Almost all of my recent work is done on it. Sketchbook Pro is a great app. Paper53 is also a fun app.
Brushes 3 and 4 are no longer supported, but the developer Steve Sprang has made his delightful vector app InkPad open source. This should be interesting. It’s like Illustrator for your iPad. I have used it for a number of logo designs.
One of the coolest apps is Tagtool for doing live shows. It allows you to create looping moving art on multiple layers. You can connect multiple iPads in a session for collaborative work. It’s one of the more expensive apps, but well worth the money. Looking forward to getting my hands on the iPad Air. Sounds perfect for tagtooling.
There are also some fun designing apps like Phoster and Over. You can comp quick fun designs from your art. Sometimes very convincing.
Stylii have improved since we last talked. There are a number of options for a pressure sensitive stylus. I use the Pogo connect. But mostly I just use my finger.
CoM: Any advice for artists looking to get their works off the iPad and into the real world – about printing, finding sponsors, opportunities?
MW: When you create virtual art how you output it becomes very important. I would think beyond letter size glycee prints. Experiment. There are no limitations. Paper, plastics, I have had great results with plexiglass. I have been commissioned to do a glass door, I am looking forward to that.
You should get your work out there, online, social media…make connections. Don’t be timid. People will notice you. Participate in competitions. But mostly, to paraphrase the great cyclist Eddy Merckx, “Paint lots.”
CoM: What are some ways that newbies can become a part of the online community?
MW: Don’t be shy and start uploading. All social media channels are open.
It seems a lot of the community has moved from Flickr to Facebook. It’s a big tribe now with lots of great art and lots of people getting their fingers dirty, so to speak, for the first time.
They are a very sharing lot and you can’t go wrong.
CoM: What mobile art shows or conferences will you be attending in the next six months or so?
MW: The curators at the museum would like to see me set up a show with my work hang side by side with some original fossils from Bolca. I think the result would be intriguing. I think it would make a great story. I am hoping for international interest in this show as the Museum has given me permission to ship the fossils.
I am participating in a show in Phoenix with some of my original core group of fingerpainting friends. That will be nice. The show is to start February 2014 and run for a year.
I am also talking about going back to Bosnia and Herzegovina for another show. I had a great reception last time. I would really like to do workshops and some live painting shows this time.
You can check out more of his work on Flickr or his website.
We’re all carrying sketchpads now, thanks to the great touchscreens on our iPads and iPhones. If toting an iPhone us all into potential artists, it turned a venerable pop artist into the world’s best-known iPad artist pretty much by accident.
David Hockney’s iPad made it into his artistic toolkit in 2010 because it happened to fit into the specially made pocket he has sewn into all his jackets – for sketchbooks.
The venerable pop artist has been using Apple devices to send daily sketches to friends since 2009. Some of those sketches are now living large in paper format at San Francisco’s de Young Museum in the aptly titled “David Hockney: A Bigger Exhibition” until January 2014.
Dior designer Camille Miceli in the Wall Street Journal.
Even a designer at fashion house Christian Dior can’t get her hands on a gold iPhone.
Camille Miceli, Dior’s artistic director of accessories, loves her iPhone. According to a Q&A with the Wall Street Journal, she spends every morning reading daily “Le Monde” on it in bed. (Oh la la!)
Though we harbored doubts before the debut that it was the epitome of tacky, Apple’s golden iPhone 5S mines current fashion trends – the color has been glimmering more on store shelves by a whopping 88 percent.
This week’s Cult of Mac Magazine is all about apps that push boundaries – enabling us to share, connect and get stuff done.
Think back: When was the last time you hitchhiked? Crashed on the couch of a stranger? Did you get your last job on the street corner? Or meet that special someone there?
You’ve probably used your iPhone recently to couch surf, catch a ride downtown, find a date or maybe even source a freebie for dinner.
We talk to experts to understand why we feel comfortable doing things with our iPhones that were traditionally “Stranger, Danger” territory and our intrepid reporters find out what happens when you catch a ride, look for work, open up your house and try to get rid of Cheetos snack packs to perfect strangers.
There’s a crazy gallery of apps that pushed Apple’s boundaries too far — remember Baby Shaker? — and an update on why you can still find your dictator of choice in the iTunes store.
Our exclusive Ask An Apple Genius column weighs in why Mavericks scrolling seem so sluggish and why the geniuses sometimes don’t seem as smart as you are.
It may be a cliche, but if the Internet has proven great at one thing, it’s connecting people. It’s allowed a million communities to bloom, big and small.
These days, the iPhone is having a similar bonding effect, but offline.
We trust our iPhones to reach out to people – sure, mainly friends and family – but also to contact complete strangers in the quest for a ride, a love match or a new job.
One effect is that we’re all becoming micro-entrepreneurs, according to Rachel Botsman, author of 2010’s “What’s Mine is Yours: The rise of Collaborative Consumption.” Peer-to-peer rentals alone are an estimated $26 billion market sector, she writes.
And it’s not just a bad economy that leads us to share our car, our leftovers or get a loan outside traditional channels, Botsman notes. That may have given it momentum, but increasingly it was the iPhone itself.
“People today are starved for community,” says Anthony Centore, a licensed counselor and founder of Thriveworks. “We’ll take some risks to connect.”
And that connection — tenuous at first — may be that you and I both have iPhones.
“I’d suggest there’s an element of trust there (with iPhones). Of ‘Well, we’re all in the same boat, they’re just like me, let’s help each other out’,” says Adrienne Andrew, a UX researcher for lifelogging app Saga. “I wouldn’t go so far to say that it’s as if we’re all vetted by Apple, but there is an element of self-selection.”
Smartphones may seem ubiquitous, but there are certain demographics that use them more and an even smaller subset that use these apps, adding to a feeling of safety when using them.
“We are more comfortable swapping houses, meeting people, and sharing rides with “strangers” because the same digital technologies that support these smartphone-facilitated encounters discourages anonymity and, with it, antisocial behavior,” says Dana Klisanin, psychologist, founder and CEO of think-tank Evolutionary Guidance Media R&D, Inc.
CC-licensed, via FromSandToGlass on Flickr.
Personal Boundaries And Sliding Doors
There seem to be two basic strategies that people take with sharing their lives with their smartphones: open book or peek-a-boo.
Centore, the counselor, decided long ago that he’s personally for the open book strategy. “Everything online is going to be who I am – everything I present needs to be public,” he says, though he has tweaked some privacy settings on Facebook but isn’t obsessive about who sees what.
His social media roster includes Vine, Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Yelp and Google Places. The 33-year-old, Boston-based therapist, who dated online when he was single, hasn’t tried Lyft but had a good holiday experience at a stranger’s beach house found on Airbnb.
Andrew, who holds degrees in computer science and learning design technology from MIT and Stanford, is more for the second strategy. She uses Saga’s lifelogging tool to track her bike commute to work, for example, but keeps her settings public or private depending on where the followers are based.
The app uses your iPhone’s Location Services to log where you are, connecting with apps including RunKeeper, Instagram, FitBit, Facebook, FourSquare and more. There’s a Twitter-like follow-follower model and users can decide who sees what as the stream of locations and activities is logged.
Andrew says she’s noticed her own tendencies as a “control freak” to tweak the default settings and now says she realizes she breaks down followers into three basic groups: “People I know and trust, and I don’t mind if they see most of what I’m doing, then there are people who maybe I know a little bit about them but they’re in the greater Seattle area – but I don’t know well or at all – and I don’t want them to see basically anything and then there are random people in Ireland or Florida, whom I’ll probably never meet and I don’t worry about how they’ll judge me.”
What takes most of the anguish out of sharing and participating in many of these formerly off-bounds activities is the fact that the device itself creates some accountability.
“Participants are trackable via their digital footprint and GPS technologies and in many cases, once an individual has participated in such a swap, etc., community feedback will be available to inform others,” Klisanin says.
“Providing such feedback is a form of digital altruism, an action that takes a little time, but supports individuals and their communities. While it is always important to be cautious, “strangers” who have signed up with “ride-sharing” sites are not the same as the completely anonymous hitchhikers our mother’s warned us about.”
What limits are there to sharing?
But are there limits to what you can do with an app? Some niche ideas – like exchanging breast milk – will get a lot of press but won’t necessarily take off — the target market is probably too small. However, the cost of developing an app to try out an idea is very low.
“As the cost of developing these apps goes down, it’s not that hard to throw your hat in the ring to create something,” Centore says. “Some will be wacky and some will fail, others may only appeal to a very small niche of people.”
Some services, he says, are ripe for disruptive tech. Once more of us can get our heads around the idea. For example, even though many clients use Google to find a therapist, Centore says they prefer face-to-face counseling.
When clients call one of the six Thriveworks centers, they are always offered the online counseling option but most say no. “The conversion rate is minuscule,” he says, adding that the resistance is likely because even though people are comfortable using Skype, if they’re going to therapy they want someone present with them.
“I won’t say there are no limits to what you can do with apps,” Andrew says. But when I ask about the flop of our trial with the Leftover Swap app as the outer limits to smartphone-enabled sharing, she tells me about a mom’s email list in Seattle that she belongs to where people frequently offer swaps of gluten-free flour or diapers in a heavily populated area of the city, often leaving items on their front porches for pick-up.
What’s the difference between swapping seconds on an email list and through an app?
“It’s kind of semi-curated thing and there’s a barrier to getting into it,” she notes. “That barrier is what convinces people that it’s safe. It gets back to ride sharing: finding common ground where you can say, ‘These people are like me,’ seems to be the key.”
A few years ago, developers pushed a lot of boundaries in the iTunes store. Either that, or the minions who OK’d them in a Cupertino basement needed more coffee, better judgement and probably a raise.
As you’ve seen from our gallery of banned apps, the world really doesn’t need to play Baby Shaker with an iPhone. A lot of these apps made a peek-a-boo in the app store and were never more.
But as the virtual store becomes more like a bazaar for its wide range of offerings, you can find just about anything there – including apps about controversial figures like Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini.
In 2010, Italian developer Luigi Marino made a media splash with an app about dictator Benito Mussolini. The iPhone app of Mussolini’s speeches was the second-highest paid app in the Italian iTunes store a week after launching despite criticism for giving voice to Il Duce’s diehard fans. The app, available in the US store but published in Italian, costs $0.99 with additional in-app purchases for maps and videos.
It seems there is a kind of double standard for quote apps of controversial figures. For example, the US iTunes store features a bunch Dalai Lama teachings and quotes apps, but these were all removed from China’s iTunes store leading to cries of censorship. And if Il Duce doesn’t do it for you, there are still apps available on Che Guevara and Franco, too.
Apps by Luigi Marino.
After Mussolini made a hasty exit for copyright violations, it was reinstated soon after and has been available ever since. Marino kept on developing apps, adding iStalin, Hitler and iGandhi to the store.
He told told Cult of Mac that there were some hiccups getting the Hitler app into iTunes. In fact, it remains unpublished in the Italian store after Jewish groups protested but it is on sale in Germany, where Mein Kampf has been banned since 1945. It’s the grim jaw of Mussolini, however, that Marino says attracts the most buyers.
“I still get emails every day about iMussolini,” Marino, who lives in Naples, Italy, said. “There is a lot of engagement – in my opinion it increases in times when there are more political problems.”
A $1.99 iPad app version released in March allows users to upload pics of fascist memorabilia to a gallery and share info from the app on Twitter, Facebook or via email.
Marino, now CEO at mobile development agency Creact, says he has about 20-25,000 users registered for push notifications for iMussolini.
Venerable pop artist David Hockney brought his art from the screen of the iPad to towering heights in San Francisco.
If you’re used to seeing his quick iPhone sketches on a screen, the 12-foot-high views to Yosemite are an eyeful. You can catch them at San Francisco’s de Young Musuem in the aptly titled “David Hockney: A Bigger Exhibitiion” until January 2014.
We’ll have more on Hockney’s stunning work and the exhibit in the November 2 edition of Cult of Mac Magazine, dedicated to mobile art.
This week’s edition of Cult of Mac Magazine explores the issue of privacy in the PRISM age. Whether you have anything to hide or not, awareness of what data you are sending out and who can see it as always a good thing.
We’ve got great how-tos to about keeping things locked down in your email, browser, instant messaging and backups as well as what to know about the key privacy settings in iOS 7 and how to cover your privates with social media apps.
For those of you who have, ahem, things to hide from a snooping spouse, roommate or parent, we’ve also got you covered.
And if you think you’re an open book, we talk to an artist who broadcast his life from his iPhone screen to an open web page for an entire year. He tells us what happens when your wife gets in the act and your mother always knows what you’re up to.
Publisher Leander Kahney discusses his foray into the private lives of Apple designers while researching his latest book and our exclusive Apple Genius column discusses drinking on the job and vintage Macs.
We hope you check it out – and let us know what you think!
This post contains affiliate links. Cult of Mac may earn a commission when you use our links to buy items.
Artist Johannes P. Osterhoff documents getting clean.
For a whole year, Johannes P. Osterhoff broadcast what came across his iPhone screen to an open internet page.
Anyone who stumbled onto his iPhone Live website could spy on how much beer he was drinking, who called him, what games he was playing, his email inbox, how long his showers took, see what gigs he had lined up, his Twitter exchanges and what his moods were. As you can imagine, there were some interesting consequences for his friends and a few worried conversations with his mom.
Calling himself an interface artist, this project was less playful than some of his previous efforts. It grew from being “concerned about the growing amount of personal data that was stored on smartphones and that users lose control over it,” he told Cult of Mac.
With the stranger-than-science fiction story of the National Security Agency coming to light at the tail end of his iPhone Live year, the experiment has added resonance. While Americans disapprove of surveillance programs – about 53% were against spying in a Gallup poll taken after the Edward Snowden story broke – our participation in social media and the traces we leave publicly has skyrocketed. In 2008, just 12 million of us were “heavy” social media users – now that figure is 71 million, or about six times as many people, according to Edison research. That’s a lot of status updates.
Osterhoff’s wife, Mi Sun, goes live.
The Peek-A-Boo Challenge
In a way, Osterhoff is simply going bigger with what we all do, every day. You may laugh at lifecasters, but that’s what you do with every tweet, Facebook update, FourSquare check-in and Flickr snap. We don’t do it for money, though — and maybe we should stop sneering at those who do. At least they get paid for it. We do it to stay in touch. To prove we matter.
Osterhoff’s unease – and impetus – for the project came with the realization that “interaction with our smartphones serves the companies who provide platforms and apps more than it serves us, the actual users and the originators of information and data.” He wanted to share his information but keep control over what he was providing. This proved his biggest challenge.
When the project captured media attention, there were a flurry of visitors peering into his daily life on the web. Osterhoff tried to shield his friends and acquaintances from making unwanted cameos. He rigged up his jailbroken phone so that every time he hit the “home” button it would take a screen shot and upload it online. This gave him the flexibility to avoid capturing anything that might be better left private.
“Luckily apps provided me with more freedom than I had expected,” he said. “If I did not want to show the content of an email for example, I usually navigated back and showed the folder structure of my inbox instead. On the other hand, I wanted to entertain my visitors, so I used Camera+, Instagram, Google Maps more frequently to tell stories about my life. I would not have done this without an audience.”
His beer consumption prompted a few calls from mom.
When Your Peeps Want More Privacy
Osterhoff’s wife, Mi Sun, gladly participated in the project. The pair even enjoyed documenting their trip to Korea, “staging” the more interesting and photogenic parts of the journey to keep friends and family in the loop, he said. His mom, who voiced concern initially about the project, checked up on him after she thought he’d logged too many beers the night before — but she did like being able to stay abreast of his everyday doings any time she wanted. For his friends, it was different.
“I received less text messages then I did before the performance,” Osterhoff remarked. “My friends preferred to call me directly. The topic then would not be tracked and the call would only be listed in the call history.”
Life After the Truman Show
He logged in 13.575 screenshots of his home screen during the project, where anyone could participate by using his phone number at the top of the site or sending him an email. Osterhoff took the performance live, too, participating in events like Berlin’s Transmediale Festival where his iPhone screen was projected behind him as people live tweeted or emailed him comments and questions.
The apps taking up most of the limelight were Instagram, Mail, Phone and Safari, with a few guest spots from players like Pizza.de, Shazam, Cut The Rope, Angry Birds and Ikea. After an initial burst of energy, Osterhoff’s postings fell off about two-thirds of the way through the show. A broken dock connector (lint turned out to be the culprit) meant he had to cool his heels and wait for a replacement part to finish the experiment.
So, what happens after you’ve bared all for a year?
“Currently, using my iPhone feels pretty boring,” Osterhoff told us a few weeks after the end of the experiment. “I realized that I did a lot of stuff only due to the performance — tracking my showers, beers and mood for example. I have already stopped doing that, since it is pointless without an audience.” He’s back to heavy usage of the basics, namely: calls, Mobile Safari and Google Maps.
Osterhoff hasn’t walked out on lifecasting altogether, though. His latest project, called “Dear Jeff Bezos,” also centers around privacy by documenting what he’s reading on an Amazon Kindle. He jailbroke the device so that it every time he sets a bookmark, it sends an email to the Amazon CEO.
“Not so long ago it was very simple to read a book in private, Osterhoff said. “Companies like Amazon are interested in exclusive ownership of data, because with this exclusivity comes value. As a user of such services, one loses not only control but also authorship of the data one generated. To make the data I generate public is to devalue it. This is why I prefer to share data in an open format.”
The iPhone Live project also exposed his own ignorance – when a friend asked him over Twitter about spy operation PRISM, Osterhoff mistakenly replied on screen about the puzzle game of the same name. Perhaps too engrossed in tracking his own doings – using apps like iBeer, Mr.Mood and ShowerTimer – he hadn’t paid that much attention to the news.
Still, broadcasting our own data may be the way to go. “Screenshots contain a lot of information for humans, but it is still difficult to extract machine-readable data from them,” he said. “So actually, iPhone live also shows how we could share information with friends only and make it difficult for others, such as the NSA, to extract meaningful data.”
Veteran pop artist David Hockney took to sketching with the iPhone and iPad a few years ago, using his fingers to brush out works that he sent daily to friends and family.
Hockney’s works brought a new sheen to art on Apple’s devices, making them more than just instruments for amateurs. His forthcoming show which includes the digital works at San Francisco’s de Young Museum will have so many works, curators can’t even count them.
After a meeting that stretched over four-and-a-half hours, the Cupertino City Council gave Apple’s new campus the green light.
Two years have passed since Steve Jobs pitched the futuristic new headquarters to the town where he met Steve Wozniak as a high school student. Designed by Sir Norman Foster, at 176-acre Apple Campus 2 will be one of the largest building complexes in the world.
Dozens of locals came to testify that, in effect, this is a modern company town — the sentiment from former Apple employees, enthusiastic local business owners (“Apple engineers need our coffee!”), retired teachers and even environmental groups was overwhelmingly positive — concerns over what happens when you land such a huge project in one’s backyard were numerous.
Naysayers (one of them called himself the “loneliest man in the room”) complained about the inevitable traffic brought by 16,000 Apple employees (a number expected to blossom to 24,000) who will be driving to and from work when the massive project is completed. Other concerns were voiced about the security measures that keep the campus closed to the public and shut off a stretch of Calabazas Creek to hikers.
The 60-foot-high “fruit loop” will change the profile of the town of about 60,000, that’s for sure. Here’s hoping it’s for the better. More on the meeting and its impromptu tribute to Steve Jobs here.
Stay tuned, after this unanimous vote the council has one more procedural vote before Apple can break ground.
This week Cult of Mac Magazine gets serious about games with an issue dedicated to one of our favorite pastimes.
We’ve never bought into the idea that video games turn your brain to mush (sorry mom!) and this issue explores the games that are doing good — the growing market for empathy games that strive to make us all better people. (The retro-tastic cover is the handiwork of Craig Grannell, the designing force behind the magazine.)
We also look at games that are engaging enough to convince the non-gamers you know to take up the controller, what to play when you’re sick of the blockbusters and our Games Editor Rob LeFebvre tells you how to get your game on our radar for a review.
The latest issue is available in the App Store. Let the games begin!
