Unretouched images from 5th Gen iPod touch:
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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 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.
4 responses to “The 2012 iPod Touch: A Great Pocket Computer For Kids [Review]”
My kids love their iPod Touches (last gen models). I’m sure they would enjoy the new ones… but I’m going to pass and here is why. The rumored iPad mini will be a much better replacement for my son IMO, plus I’ll likely upgrade my daughter to a iPhone 4S since she has been doing a pretty decent job lately with her first cell phone (a crappy Virgin Mobile Android cheap pos).
Thanks for the right up though. Glad your boy is pleased with it.
Thanks for the great review..
I’m considering one for my grandaughter, but I think I’ll wait and see if the iPad Mini pricing affects things.
You call him an ingrate for using his own money to buy what he wants? It’s not like he asked yo to buy it for him. Also, I know a lot of adults from work (so business professionals) that use this device as a Palm Pilot replacement, it’s not just for children.
Your kid is right about the 3GS though, it’s a piece of shit. It doesn’t even have a Flash on the Camera! Pictures with the 3GS look awful. The minimum iPhone you should ever get is a 4, anything older than that isn’t worth it.
Reading_? I have a touch 4th gen. I read frequently, and have read a mountain of books on this thing, has become my main use for it. It is a great reader for epub books and novels. The new Touch is seriously overpriced, in particular with the mini coming out. Also, the pointless reduction in specs between the Touch 5th gen and the iPhone is a further signal of Apple’s inability to truly innovate, as they continue dropping useful features and limiting, dumbing down, this device over the phone. There is a very arrogant punk ethic at work here, with Apple, well symbolised by the content of this article.