Netflix 5 brings HD video and AirPlay to iPads running iOS 7. You may have thought you had HD video streaming to your retina iPad, but you didn’t. 5 fixes that, and it also lets you throw your TV shows and movies up onto your big screen via Apple TV with native AirPlay streaming.
We’re hearing a lot more of Laurene Powell Jobs’ name lately, with her new media venture, Ozymandias, various philanthropic efforts, her long-standing involvement with College Track, and more recent involvement in immigration reform.
While her name may be more well known to readers of this site as the widow of the Apple founder and superstar, but as time passes since his death, she has been stepping into the spotlight more often, becoming more visible as the world’s ninth richest woman and an active philanthropist in her own right.
As Saturday is the anniversary of Steve Jobs’ passing (and we’ve got an entire Newsstand issue to commemorate it), it seemed fitting to take a closer look at the woman who was by his side since 1991.
Gone but not forgotten: this week Cult of Mac Magazine pays homage to late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.
We speak to Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell who knew Jobs back when he was so difficult to be around he landed on the night shift, hear from Cult of Mac publisher Leander Kahney what it was like to cover tech with such an outsize personality always storming the headlines, share some of the best everyday anecdotes from people who encountered Jobs plus take a look at the best tributes to the man called the Edison of our times.
The latest issue is available in the App Store.
We hope you’ll enjoy it – and keep in touch with comments, questions, shout-outs – we’re listening!
Among his many talents, Steve Jobs was one of the great orators and inspiring speakers of our time. Part sage, part showman, Jobs combined the wizardry of a magician with the skills of a master salesman. On this, the second anniversary of his death, we take a video look back at some of his memorable demos, quotes and speeches.
We begin with one of the most influential demos of all – the unveiling of the Macintosh. While many people have seen the 1984 TV commercial, far fewer saw the event in person. Giving a hint of keynotes to come, a tuxedo-clad Jobs and his magical child steal the show on January 24, 1984.
It’s been two years now, since Steve Jobs passed, so on our newest CultCast, we remember Mr. Jobs, examine how he pushed those around him to their creative bests, and ponder how his absence impacts the company he left behind. And stick around until the end where we’re rebroadcasting, in full, one of Steve’s most special appearances.
Have a few laughs whilst getting caught up on each week’s finest Apple stories! Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let the unadulterated audio enjoyment begin. Show notes up next.
We had the sense that in some ways, we’re talking even more about Steve Jobs than we ever did. Then again, we’re called Cult of Mac and our vision of things has a certain, shall we say, focus.
So we checked out a database called Newsbank to see if our hunch was right. After searching nearly 70,000 U.S. publications from 1999 to 2013 (just up to October 4, mind you) to see how many articles featured Steve Jobs in the headline, we feel pretty vindicated.
Back in 1999, the year Jobs introduced the new Power Mac G3 and the color iMacs and “starred” in TV movie Pirates of Silicon Valley, the Apple co-founder headlined about 1,000 articles.
The number remained steady with about a thousand articles a year until 2005, when it bumped up to around 2,500. That was the year when iTunes expanded to include TV shows and music videos and Steve unveiled the new fifth-generation iPod that plays music, photos and video.
The number of news articles dedicated to Jobs nearly tripled by 2007, with the advent of the iPhone. In 2011 with his passing, it peaked to over 15,000 articles. That number hasn’t dipped to under 5,000 articles since. And we have a feeling it won’t for some time to come.
There are a bunch of apps out on iOS for kids, from educational apps to sports apps and more. Sure, you can get reviews of these games by adults, sometimes even from parents of kids who use them.
We thought it’d be fun, though, to ask the kids themselves.
Welcome to Kid APProved, a series of videos in which we ask our own children what they think of apps on the App Store that they’re using.
This week, it’s tons of Disney fun with Disney Infinity: Toy Box, which is free on the app store. Here’s what our Kid APProved reporter thinks.
I really hate zombies. They’re gross and smelly and violent, and they get everywhere. So killing them is basically a victimless crime, right? For example: If I were to, say, take a truck and attach a giant mechanical arm to it, and then put a gun on the end of that arm, and then have my buddy drive me around a zombie-infested city so I could sit inside and just fire endless rounds into the undead legion and maybe laugh like a crazy person while doing it, which court in the world would convict me?
No court, is which one.
That’s kinda the premise of Gunner Z, minus the lengthy, sensational trial: You’re the gunner of a suped-up armored truck that drives around shooting zombies and occasionally members of a fringe paramilitary group. It’s an arcade-style, free-to-play shootfest in which you mow down endless waves of zombies in a world gone mad.
And it’s surprisingly dull.
I miss Steve Jobs. He made tech reporting a lot of fun. The world of technology is dull without him.
Larry Ellison skips his own conference to watch the America’s Cup? Boring! Steve Ballmer steps down from Microsoft without taking anyone with him? Yawn.
Life was never so dull when Jobs was around. He said crazy stuff. He was rude to people. He insulted competitors. He was unpredictable.
Jobs was always up to something. He was either trying to destroy historical landmarks (like his derelict Woodside mansion) or put them up (Apple’s spaceship campus). He could turn a kill-me-now planning meeting at Cupertino city council into something fascinating.
His public presentations were always interesting. I went to almost every one from the late 1990s onwards. I’d be lying if I said they were all great. Some were routine, although it was always amusing to see him get lathered up about small things, like sending email postcards from iPhoto. But they were often fascinating, and some felt important. His iPhone introduction in 2007 felt like history being made and I was thrilled to see it firsthand.
It’s been two years since he died and I miss the excitement he brought to tech. There was always a lot of drama around Jobs. Illegitimate children. Secret liver transplants. Coffeeshop dates with Google’s Eric Schmidt. Parking in handicapped spots.
People talked about him, and not always in a good way. He was constantly criticized. For most of his career, almost everything he did was doomed to failure by the press: the iMac, Apple retail stores, the iPod, the iPhone. Each was greeted with withering, dismissive criticism. It was only after the iPhone became a hit, around 2009, that the world woke up to his genius. He’s lionized now, of course, but for most of his life he was a loser (remember the NeXT years?) or a slick marketer who got lucky.
The last couple of years of his life, as Apple rode the iPhone and iPad explosion, Jobs tended to get all the credit. Now that he’s gone, Apple is doomed without him.
I’m not worried about the future of Apple. It’s still too early to tell, but by all outside measures the company is doing just fine. Nine million iPhones sold in a single weekend is not a sign of a company in trouble.
There’s been only one major executive departure –Scott Forstall, the man in charge of iOS– and few have mourned his passing. The iPhone’s Touch ID has the potential to be as revolutionary as iTunes or the App Store were when they launched. And there are signs of some very exciting products being cooked up in the design lab, especially a wearable iWatch that measures your biometrics. And I’d love to see an Apple TV that brought some smarts to the tube.
This past year I’ve been working on a book about Apple’s top designer, Sir Jonathan Ive. Ive is a genius and he’s responsible for a lot more of Apple’s success than he’s been given credit for. But the best stories belong to Jobs. He’s by turns fascinating, funny or horrifying. He was colorful. A huge character.
This issue of our Newsstand magazine collects a few stories about Jobs. As you’ll see, he wasn’t always a jerk. Some of these anecdotes show a rather kind and thoughtful man. Some portray a runaway monster. But none of them are boring.
The Los Altos family home that Steve Jobs grew up in will soon become a historical site, if the seven-member Los Altos Historical Commission approves a recently scheduled “historic property evaluation” on the home.
Steve Jobs and his foster parents moved into the house on 2066 Crist Drive in Los Altos, California, when he was in 7th grade and continued to live there though his high school days.