Aaron Freedman is a 16 year old who’s very passionate and knowledgeable about technology and journalism. He enjoys working on his two main projects, The Teen Tech Buzz podcast and the MacUser blog.
Aaron was born on March 5th, 1992, to parents Cynthia and Samuel, in Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. He lived in New York on the Upper West Side for the first few months of his life, after which moving to Metuchen, New Jersey. In Metuchen, Aaron attended preschool, kindergarten, and first grade before moving back to New York with his family in 1999. Aaron lived for his first year back in New York on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, attending a public elementary school right across the street. While still attending the same public school, Aaron moved to Morningside Hights the following year, where he continues to live to this day. Following his elementary school graduation, Aaron went on to attend a gifted program at a public middle school in the Upper West Side. Then, this year, he graduated from that school and went on to 9th grade at a private high school on the Upper West Side, where he is currently.
Aaron has always grown up surrounded by journalism. His father, Samuel G. Freedman, is an author and professor of journalism at Columbia University, and his mother teaches legal writing part-time at Yeshiva University’s Cardozo Law School. He wrote many “books” (a.k.a. short stories from his imagination) as a young child, and continued to write throughout elementary, middle, and now high school, in the form of reports, essays, and various papers. Aaron also loves reading, as he has since childhood. While he originally enjoyed fantasy fiction, he has now advanced to various forms of adult fiction and non-fiction, particularly books on world and 20th Century history.
Aaron also has an incredible passion for technology. His first exposure to a computer was his family’s 1996-era Gateway. This is when Aaron first discovered the keyboard, mouse, and graphical user interface, if only within the bounds of Windows 95. Following Aaron’s return to New York, he was increasingly exposed to technology in the computer lab at his elementary school. This time, though, Aaron first saw a Mac. This encounter with the original iMac started Aaron’s fascination and later passion for the Mac and Apple, which continues to this day. This curiosity with computers increased when Aaron first saw the iMac G4 and Mac OS X. It’s hard to say when Aaron first became fully technically fluent with computers, but it most likely happened somewhere around fifth and sixth grade. At this point, Aaron was using a Dell Dimension Desktop running Windows XP. He had finally escaped beyond the confines of AOL and dial-up, now using a RoadRunner high-speed Internet connection. But, he still hadn’t achieved the knowledge he has today about computers and technology. It took until his Bar Mitzvah in March 2005, when Aaron got his first Mac, a computer that he had been dying for for some time. It was a 15″ 1.67GHz Powerbook G4, a real beauty. With his new Mac, Aaron started getting truly exposed to the underpinnings of computers and technology.
By September 2005, Aaron’s knowledge of computers and technology and grown tremendously since his Bar Mitzvah. He had come to start to master Mac OS X 10.4, in addition to learning more and more about the world of cell phones, PDAs, consumer electronics, and technology in general. But in September, Aaron had an inspiration. It was to start what is now known as The Teen Tech Buzz podcast. The idea for The Teen Tech Buzz began in June 2005, when Steve Jobs announced that iTunes would be gaining support for podcasts, pre-recorded Internet radio shows that are downloaded onto a computer and portable music player, such as an iPod. Aaron had heard of podcasts before, but he never knew much about them. With iTunes now supporting podcasts, Apple was exposed to a world of interesting and captivating shows, including Inside Mac Radio, Podfinder, and more. But, then Aaron realized something. “If anyone can make a podcast, why can’t I?” So, it was then that in September, with his best friend Austen, Aaron created The Teen Tech Buzz. What started out as an experimental concept involving Garageband, Skype, and low-quality mics has now evolved into an advanced and full-featured show, featuring guests including David Pogue of The New York Times, Peter Rojas of Engadget, David Prager of Revision3, and Leander Kahney of Wired Magazine. For over a year now, Apple has loved recording and producing The Teen Tech Buzz, in which he and Austen cover the latest tech news, review a variety of new gadgets, interview prominent faces in the tech world, and do much, much more.
But even with his podcast, Aaron still hadn’t reached his most recent stop on the tech journalism track. In fact, it was because of one of the guests on his podcast that Aaron achieved this step. Cyrus Farivar, currently an editor for Engadget but back then for Macworld, was interviewed on the first episode of The Teen Tech Buzz (he was a student in my father’s book class the year before). It was he that, in February, invited Aaron to join the MacUser blog. It was thrilling for him to be not just invited to write for a blog, but to be paid for it too. Since then, Aaron has been writing for the MacUser blog (which is part of Macworld) on a variety of topics, including Macs, iPods, and whatever the latest buzz in the Apple world is.
Aaron now lives happily in Morningside Heights with his mother, father, and sister, and hopes to spend many more years doing The Teen Tech Buzz and MacUser blog.
For more, see my resume.
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