SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD / iWORLD 2012 — Talking on stage about her love of technology and gadgets, New Yorker writer Susan Orlean rhapsodized her iPad, and told how she converted her husband to Apple technology.
A self-confessed geek, Orlean told how the iPad solved all the problems she had with working and traveling with technology. She had a Danger Sidekick, but would go nuts taking notes on it. She finds her MacBook too heavy to carry all day.
She also not afraid of losing or damaging her iPad. “I can it take with me to take notes but it won’t have my life on it if it gets lost or stolen,” she said. “It solved all of my problems.”
And her favorite app?
“I’m a complete app obsessive,” she said. “I’ve done some app reviewing because I love it.”
Orlean said she has a “million” apps, all stuffed in folders, but her favorite app, the one she absolutely couldn’t live without, is Evernote, a popular database app for saving notes, photos, webpages and other ephemera. She uses it for reporting and in her personal life.
However, because the official Evernote app is clunky on the iPhone, she uses FastEver and FastSnap for capturing notes and photos instead.
The only game she plays is Bejeweled. “It’s like being a chain smoker,” she said. “It’s an addiction.”
Orlean is an author and staff writer for The New Yorker. Her bestseller, The Orchid Thief, was made into a movie staring Meryl Streep. Her latest book is Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend about Hollywood’s most famous canine movie star.
Orlean said there are four iPads in her household: one each for her and her husband; one for her son and one for their nanny.
“We got one for our nanny as a Christmas present,” she said. “I’ve never seen such joy on someone’s face.”
She also told how she converted her husband — described as a “Windows guy” — to Apple technology.
“Do you want to stay married?” she joked, which got a good response from the Macworld crowd.
She converted him because on trips he would always forget his PC power adapter and chargers for cell phone and other gadgets. Orlean would nevr forget hers, so it made sense for him to get the same devices.
“I persuaded him,” she laughed. “I got him in line. Now he has an iPhone, an iPad, a MacBook. He’s a changed man.”
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
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
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
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.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
