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Kahney's Korner: Get ready for 'Cult of Mac' v.2
Apr 30, 2024
Leander Kahney is diving into a year-long journey to update his 2006 book, "Cult of Mac." To kick it off, he's revisiting the original -- and getting a laugh remembering some of the incredible stories about Mac lovers that it contains.
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Hi, I'm Leander Caney, publisher and editor of..
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Hello, I'm Leander Caney, editor and publisher of CultOfMac.com and this is Caney's Corner, my weekly rant about whatever's getting on my t***
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So I'm pleased to announce that we're doing version two of CultOfMac
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the book that launched an empire. So the publisher has asked us to update the book next year
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and take a look at what's been going on in Apple culture in the last ten years since the book first came out
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And I haven't actually looked at it in ten years, but was actually quite pleased with how it was
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I'm always faintly embarrassed about my books, and this one particularly, but this one worked out pretty good
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I was surprised that there were some really good stories in there, and I laughed out loud a couple of times
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It was some pretty good jokes. I'm really excited about the new version because there's a lot been going on in Apple culture since then
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This is a product of the late 90s when Apple was on the ropes. And the only thing that kept the company alive was its customers and its fans
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And they were organizing online, and of course the internet was new then too
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So there was this crazy phenomenon of this active, passionate group of customers
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who were organizing primarily online. But they were also doing other things too
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There's a section in here about the customers that used to go to the old computer stores
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and they would volunteer their nights and weekends as unpaid salespeople and fix up all the broken Macs, the neglected Macs
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in places like CompUSA where they were put on a back dusty shelf and they were switched off
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And these guys would go in and switch them on and then stay there for hours trying to sell these computers to people that were working, looking for a new PC
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So another crazy story that I've completely forgotten about in the book was in the chapter on Apple tattoos
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This is all the people that get Apple tattoos. And there's this guy here, Christoph Koch
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who's got crazy hair and a rainbow tattoo on his shoulder. Turns out Christoph is one of the world's leading brain scientists
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He's an expert in cryptogenetics, which is the new study of turning on neurons by stimulating them with light
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Crazy stuff, cracking the neural code. And here he is with his Apple tattoo
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Another great story that I've forgotten about concerns this kid who was a big fantasy Mac maker
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He would make mock-ups of rumored Apple products. And at the time, it was things like the Cube and the PowerBook
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And he would make these 3D renderings based on the rumors. And now he works at Apple's design department making them for real
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So in the intervening 10 years, a lot of stuff has been going on
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You know, the phenomenon around all the product launches at the Apple stores
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the new store openings. And of course now Apple is much more international. There's a lot going on in other countries
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So I'm super excited to be looking into that. And I'm going to be reporting on it for the next year or so
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And we're going to collect all the stories into a book. That was Keynes Corner. More quality content brought to you from Cult of Media Corp
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Don't forget to check out Cult of Mac every day. And follow us on Twitter, Cult of Mac and Cult of Mac
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