I used to transcribe his articles to a text file and post them to Usenet.
Thank you for your service.
People like you were how people in other countries learned about technology and of other cultures in the days before the internet.
Some person (people?) would post scripts from Red Dwarf on one of the networks years before the show became available televisually in the United States. I used to devour those and laughed and laughed and laughed. That kind of British humor comes through well as text.
First it was Jerry Pournelle and now it's John Dvorak. I read those columns religiously back in the day. I just realized I no longer read anyone religiously, listen to podcasts for any length of time - there's something about the buzz of 80s computing that has been totally lost. That's not necessarily a bad thing, I think it just means the industry has matured. But boy oh boy! The immature industry was a lot of fun!
One of the funniest things he used to do was write draft reviews of software simply by looking at the back of the box. He said you could get it like 90% right just doing that, I was a different era.
I also remember Leo Laporte constantly trying to take his phone back of him as John was trying to guess his passcode or unlock pattern based on the screen smudges.
Didn't agree with him at lot but he always brought something to the table.
He was a very readable columnist for PC Mag among other places. He was also more focused on being interesting and at least a bit provocative than being correct.
> by looking at the back of the box. He said you could get it
Well that is definitely something different about today's software websites. How many times have you looked at a company's website for a product/service and still left wondering what it did?
I had many lovely dinners with John back in the 90s (he loved Chez Panisse). While his public persona could occasionally be curmudgeonly, in person he was a warm-hearted, passionate computing enthusiast.
This is exactly who it sounds like Dvorak was. I never got to know him like that, but being a public curmudgeon, but private warm-hearted person is a pretty great compliment.
For sure. I got to know John after meeting him in our respective roles as 'journalist writing about startup' and 'young startup entrepreneur'. As we got to know one another well enough to hang out after trade show hours, he gave me pretty invaluable insights and perspective on how to think about the evolving computer industry.
I'm 36, I've been an intense podcast listener and tech news reader since I was 14 years old. In 2005, I discovered This Week in Tech where John C. Dvorak was a frequent early guest. I liked his style and found other podcasts and websites where I could find his content. I really enjoyed Cranky Geeks. For fans, here is the No Agenda newsletter link with current information: https://mailchi.mp/nashownotes/rip-jcd-no-agenda-newsletter.
Dvorak hated that for decades wikipedia had the wrong birth year and refused to let him change it. He wrote at length about how wikipedia is the antithesis of the entire conception of a wiki. He was 80, born in 1946.
I found very quickly an NYT article from 1993 that listed his date of birth as "April 5, 1952". I don't know if that's the source for the Wikipedia article but that info has been around for a long time, it seems.
In the early PC days back in the eighties the bible was PC Magazine. They had a number of really talented columnists but towering above all of them was John C. Dvorak. He wrote so well, he was at times opinionated and other times intensely funny. Whether you agreed with that weeks opinion or not you felt you were better for having read it and that is truly rare.
Then along came PC TV and he got introduced to an entirely new audience. He had a blog for awhile and then I lost track of him. Then he reentered my world when he started a SubStack, actually several. One I didn't read and that was where he pontificated on things political.
Then during COVID he touched a live wire on his political SubStack, detailed why he didn't get 'the shot' and why you should too. He also correctly called out the players and what was really going on with COVID. He discovered a third new audience and became an enemy of the administration at the same time. That people was one hell of a career. He will be missed.
Damn.. images of glossy PC Magazines that I used to read are filling my head.. growing up in the 80s & 90s with computer building and reselling as the family business, and just being excited about new technology, and he was a part of that.
Fond memories of TWiT in the early 2000s and his longstanding media deconstruction and analysis on the No Agenda show, where they eschew traditional advertising, run on open source software, build community, and rely on their listenership (Producers) for on-the-ground information and a 'value for value' funding source for the show.
Sad, I met him very briefly ~20 years ago when he was giving a talk at my Alma Mater (no, you've never heard of it)
Funny enough the audience was made up of his contemporaries but were completely computer-illiterate. He wanted to discuss heady topics but the Q&A was mostly people asking him to explain Linux (How can it be free? Who owns it?) I could tell he was a bit annoyed to have to get so basic with his audience but I think he kind of somewhat enjoyed sharing a new concept with them.
I used to read him in my dad's PC Magazine subscription. I had some ~falling out over what my teenage self perceived as backwards take on mp3s and their proliferation. Perhaps one one of my earliest experiences with "kill your heroes" concept.
Glad for all of his contributions, I did enjoy reading his work.
i have spent nearly half my life listening to the voice of John C. Dvorak on a nightly basis as i went to bed.
literally since i was in college – around 2008 – i started listening to the No Agenda Show. i'd play the podcast in one ear with the other on my pillow with a 30-minute sleep timer and play it over several nights until the next episode came out.
my outlook, my ideology, my perspective on life was partly formed by this man's words.
I stopped listening to the no agenda show many years ago when I just decided that I didn't want to be worked up and angry about the world everyday of my life.
Turn off social media, turn off the news. Even local news. It's never going to make you feel good about anything. I get a weekly newsletter digest of happenings around the world and that's all I need.
My daily mood and outlook on life has increased immensely since.
I agree. The show went downhill fast in the last years, after the anecdotes ran out, and rapidly became bitter and negative, even divisive; something it originally was not.
I remember reading an article by him in the 90s where he claimed e-commerce would never take off because all internet users expect everything to be free.
I loved reading his columns at PC Magazine growing up, it's an end of an era. He had such an interesting view of the PC industry as a whole and his column was almost always the first thing I read when a new issue would arrive at my house.
One of my highlights of 90s internet was forwarding some amusing computer anecdote or joke somewhere where it eventually got to John Dvorak with my email at the top of the forward chain and he reached out asking if he could credit me or get help finding the source. Unfortunately I didn't know the original source but I felt connected to the world in a new way.
Agree, and the sad thing for me now is not being able to find an equivalent space of such crankiness against the way things are going with an authoritative voice.
I remember reading some of his columns growing up and I used to intensely dislike him for his dismissive takes on a lot of products and technologies I thought were important (most infamously, he dismissed the mouse)! Later on, I saw him as one of the regular guests on Leo Laporte's TWIT podcasts, and it totally changed my perception of him. The guy was genuinely hilarious and a real lovable curmudgeon, not a true naysayer.
I hadn't read or heard anything from him in recent years, though I had heard he had a falling out with Leo Laporte. He might have reconciled more recently but I am not sure. I know Leo will genuinely mourn him, as they were friends and colleagues for many years. I really miss him now too!
I remember listening to him in the early 90’s on WFSU public radio, a show called Software Hard Talk. I enjoyed his snarky wit. Listened to him repeatedly call one of the BOB characters barf the dog much to Melinda (French) Gates’ annoyance.
His one page gossip column in the back of PC Mag was pretty great too.
I don't know the man personally, but I was never impressed by his punditry even in the early PC MAG days and it got even worse when he started writing for MarketWatch.
He was always lots of loud platitudes or damnations with more noise than signal or thoughtful analysis. At some point, I just stopped listening and/or reading whenever his name came up.
Been racking my brain trying to understand what the purpose of this comment is. I'm not saying everyone MUST write something positive about the man, but I just have a hard time understanding what this comment in particular adds.
I think part of what made him amusing was he was earnest in his bad takes. If you heard him on a podcast he seemed kind of lovingly wrong, like the annoying uncle that you might not like listening to but you can't say you hate.
Caveat, I haven't read or listened to anything with him in some time, so I could be wrong or out of date, but that was how his public persona came across to me years ago.
I never felt he mislead, but also at some point (much like ESPN’s Stephen Smith) he decided “winning” in punditry was more about by being loud than about by being right.
My grandparents sprung for a subscription to PC Magazine when I was a preteen for a year or two so that I could read his column in the very back of each issue. I'm sure my thoughts on his opinions would be radically different today but his prose was timeless and hilarious. Mad respect and RIP.
I really enjoyed reading John C. Dvorak's PC Magazine column when I was just getting started in tech. His contrarian style was a nice change from most tech columnists at the time. He had a grumpy but oddly likable personality, and I even enjoyed No Agenda for a while and his occasional TWiT appearances.
That's why I have such mixed feelings about him. Somewhere along the way, being a contrarian seemed to become an end in itself. He became a Trump fan, and the No Agenda agenda increasingly drifted toward questioning well-established facts, from climate science to questioning the parents of the Sandy Hook victims. Real Alex Jones shit.
RIP. I remember he had a column in MacUser magazine in the early 90s. Probably at the same time he was writing for PC Magazine. It was the original "ragebait" since he always seemed to be pretty negative on Apple and suggested that Windows was better in many ways. I remember all the readers writing in complaining about his hot takes and at the time I didn't realize it was an intentional strategy.
I grew up reading his column in PC Mag, then watched him on TechTV, and then listened to him on TWiT (where he was consistently the best part of the show, and how I learned about Sarbanes-Oxley, because he'd bring it up like every single episode for a good long while there), and later No Agenda. Before I'd realized it, John had be come the constant throughline as technology progressed throughout my life. I knew it was going to happen sooner or later, but it still really hurts to see him go.
I was very lucky to get a chance to interview him on our podcast back in 2010 [1]. He of course was very funny and insightful.
So kind of him to even come on our unknown show.
I used to love listening to him in early No Agenda [2] talking about his takes on all sorts of worldly things especially fine dining, spices, and all the famous people he'd had run-ins with.
The Silicon Spin intro and Cranky Geeks theme song are burned into my head.
I was in elementary school watching ZDTV after school instead of doing my homework. One of those shows that's burned into my head, I don't even know why, is Silicon Spin.
Every now and then I have visions of my childhood, dreaming about this mysterious place called Silicon Valley that I never actually managed to get to. I also recall the fond moments watching literally everything on TechTV and ZDTV even if I didn't really fully understand everything. (I mean you're not going to understand everything in elementary school).
John C. Dvorak was probably speaking of content that my age range didn't fully comprehend at the time, but I still loved it.
I was so fortunate to meet Patrick Norton back at DEFCON in 2019, and it was a dream come true. I was able to express my appreciation not only of him but also about the whole ZDTV and TechTV cast including John C. Dvorak, many of whom had gone in different directions post TechTV. They were all such a comforting part of my childhood.
I was watching TechTV on 9/11 and remember how when Bush got on tv in the evening, they had a momentary fumble in switching over to him so they just overlaid CNN or some other news channel. Growing up Muslim in that area of the country, all the TechTV shows including Silicon Spin became even more pivotal in keeping some semblance of the happiness and ease of life I had before that day (which I never really got back).
Watching these old episodes are charming given the topics:
This has been a tough few years seeing people and companies that provided me a lot of joy and happiness start to pass away. I guess its just a part of realizing you are getting old and time moves on to the next generation.
I speak to a lot of Gen-Z since they are defining the culture now and so many of them just have little to no concept of the world before iPhone and as such don't remember that era of computing and the people involved in it.
I feel that makes all the people that were around even more special to me. We all got to be a part of that slice of history (them producing and me appreciating it and growing because of it) and it was unique to us in that time period. I am thankful that he was a part of my life journey in a small way.
About a decade ago I heard John complaining on No Agenda about a sound card mixer problem he was having in Linux. I had the same model card so I emailed offering some debugging advice. He responded almost immediately and we went back and forth trying things. If memory serves it was a config issue with pulseaudio. It was the highlight of my week.
I hated that guy so much when I was a fan of Apple. I think maybe he did it on purpose to keep the readership up. I should probably go back and read a few of his rants again with 20/20 hindsight, now that I'm not particularly fond of Apple any longer. I might end up laughing or even agreeing with him.
Sad news. He was the OG tech grouch. Went way off the deep end with conspiracy crap and right wing nonsense over the last decade, but I always assumed some of that was opportunistic performance. RIP.
Ah, well, you missed an important (and obviously beloved) part of microcomputer culture. I haven't thought about him for years, but read his columns in PC Magazine religiously. I didn't always like him, but I always read him.
For those like me wondering if he's also the creator of the Dvorak keyboard, no but close!
> He is a nephew of sociologist August Dvorak, creator of the Dvorak keyboard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Dvorak
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvorak_keyboard_layout
He was the creator of Cranky Geeks. One of the first podcasts I listened to.
I like that his Wikipedia page really sells that he was a Kentucky Colonel. That was one of the easier titles I've gotten.
This is sad.
I grew up watching his show on Tech TV and reading his columns in PC Magazine.
He used to butt heads with Leo Laporte and it was great:
https://youtu.be/C96YG7qzN80?t=142
I enjoyed John and Leo butting heads. I agree that it was great. It's a bummer they haven't done that for a long time.
It was great until Leo went off the deep end and lost 99% of his audience.
When Leo cut off Dvroak and CJal I turned out. You really do need that sort of personality for people to bounce off otherwise its less entertaining.
I didn't stick around that long to see what became of it.
I see different people saying different things about Leo and John. What happened?
August Dvorak's father's, brother's, nephew's, cousin's, former roommate.
So... what does that make him?
John C. Dvorak
That tiny 1"x1.5" thumbnail[1] of John C. Dvorak in PC Magazine was the essence of Gravitas for me as a kid.
[1]https://archive.org/details/PC-Mag-1999-12-14/page/88/mode/2...
I used to transcribe his articles to a text file and post them to Usenet. Fond memories of that time.
I used to transcribe his articles to a text file and post them to Usenet.
Thank you for your service.
People like you were how people in other countries learned about technology and of other cultures in the days before the internet.
Some person (people?) would post scripts from Red Dwarf on one of the networks years before the show became available televisually in the United States. I used to devour those and laughed and laughed and laughed. That kind of British humor comes through well as text.
What a legend.
same, read a lot of what he wrote back then.
First it was Jerry Pournelle and now it's John Dvorak. I read those columns religiously back in the day. I just realized I no longer read anyone religiously, listen to podcasts for any length of time - there's something about the buzz of 80s computing that has been totally lost. That's not necessarily a bad thing, I think it just means the industry has matured. But boy oh boy! The immature industry was a lot of fun!
Credit to him, he always had a bold take.
One of the funniest things he used to do was write draft reviews of software simply by looking at the back of the box. He said you could get it like 90% right just doing that, I was a different era.
I also remember Leo Laporte constantly trying to take his phone back of him as John was trying to guess his passcode or unlock pattern based on the screen smudges.
Didn't agree with him at lot but he always brought something to the table.
Most of what I know him for was coming on TWiT, driving Leo Laporte nuts, and making claims that ended up not coming true.
He was a hilarious curmudgeon. He will be missed.
Curmudgeon is the perfect term to describe.
He was a great part of TWIT. I liked his obscure software references (lotus Jazz was one I think).
He also found this new thing is like that old thing.
His non positive takes were a great addition to the show.
> lotus Jazz
I actually remember that.
He was a very readable columnist for PC Mag among other places. He was also more focused on being interesting and at least a bit provocative than being correct.
>He was a hilarious curmudgeon.
Agreed.
>> He was also more focused on being interesting and at least a bit provocative than being correct.
So exactly like everyone today, but also interesting?
He set the style of being confidently incorrect. At least he was entertaining.
> by looking at the back of the box. He said you could get it
Well that is definitely something different about today's software websites. How many times have you looked at a company's website for a product/service and still left wondering what it did?
When product websites are more focused on getting investors than customers the whole system breaks down
> he always had a bold take
Often quite literally, in his PC Magazine columns!
His most hilarious predictions that were almost always wrong.
I laughed at one I happened to spot recently, where he confidently said that Compaq would license Micro Channel from IBM according to "sources".
He was right about the mouse, in the long run.
I had many lovely dinners with John back in the 90s (he loved Chez Panisse). While his public persona could occasionally be curmudgeonly, in person he was a warm-hearted, passionate computing enthusiast.
This is exactly who it sounds like Dvorak was. I never got to know him like that, but being a public curmudgeon, but private warm-hearted person is a pretty great compliment.
For sure. I got to know John after meeting him in our respective roles as 'journalist writing about startup' and 'young startup entrepreneur'. As we got to know one another well enough to hang out after trade show hours, he gave me pretty invaluable insights and perspective on how to think about the evolving computer industry.
10 months ago, I actually posted on HN about how much John (and his peers) cared and helped: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45076557.
I'm 36, I've been an intense podcast listener and tech news reader since I was 14 years old. In 2005, I discovered This Week in Tech where John C. Dvorak was a frequent early guest. I liked his style and found other podcasts and websites where I could find his content. I really enjoyed Cranky Geeks. For fans, here is the No Agenda newsletter link with current information: https://mailchi.mp/nashownotes/rip-jcd-no-agenda-newsletter.
Heh, my trajectory exactly.
Wow, you’re my twin! I’d watch these on XBMC/Xbox Media Center with some other video podcasts - it was a magical moment in tech
I first become aware of John C. Dvorak in Byte magazine, ( back in the 80s?) to me he was a respected insigtful interesting content wrighter.
The post link above says he was 74, THe wikipedia page says 80. I gues one will be corrected. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Dvorak
RIP
Dvorak hated that for decades wikipedia had the wrong birth year and refused to let him change it. He wrote at length about how wikipedia is the antithesis of the entire conception of a wiki. He was 80, born in 1946.
It seems a lot of people that read about their bio on wikipedia feel the same way. In fact, it's hard not to be suspicious of those that don't.
I found very quickly an NYT article from 1993 that listed his date of birth as "April 5, 1952". I don't know if that's the source for the Wikipedia article but that info has been around for a long time, it seems.
This is odd. So you are saying wikipedia kept getting it wrong for a long time but now the announcement has it wrong and wikipedia is correct?
In the early PC days back in the eighties the bible was PC Magazine. They had a number of really talented columnists but towering above all of them was John C. Dvorak. He wrote so well, he was at times opinionated and other times intensely funny. Whether you agreed with that weeks opinion or not you felt you were better for having read it and that is truly rare.
Then along came PC TV and he got introduced to an entirely new audience. He had a blog for awhile and then I lost track of him. Then he reentered my world when he started a SubStack, actually several. One I didn't read and that was where he pontificated on things political.
Then during COVID he touched a live wire on his political SubStack, detailed why he didn't get 'the shot' and why you should too. He also correctly called out the players and what was really going on with COVID. He discovered a third new audience and became an enemy of the administration at the same time. That people was one hell of a career. He will be missed.
> what was really going on with COVID
Let me guess: a government conspiracy to push something pro-humanity
I didn't include the link but here is the last series part 1:
https://dvorak.substack.com/p/the-covid-decision-tree-part-o...
He wrote about COVID for six years. Someone should compile all those columns into a book or at least a single PDF.
Rest in Peace, John.
It looks like Adam Curry and John’s wife Mimi will be hosting an episode of No Agenda tomorrow to share stories and anecdotes in remembrance.
https://mailchi.mp/nashownotes/rip-jcd-no-agenda-newsletter?...
https://www.pcmag.com/authors/john-c-dvorak
He went all-in on his takes. Most were on the money, some were big misses. He was very good at what he did. R.I.P.
https://www.pcmag.com/opinions/reddits-wild-west-experiment-...
https://www.pcmag.com/opinions/the-30-year-ai-scare-cycle
https://www.pcmag.com/opinions/the-dark-ages-of-search
https://www.pcmag.com/opinions/enough-with-the-3d-printer-hy...
Damn.. images of glossy PC Magazines that I used to read are filling my head.. growing up in the 80s & 90s with computer building and reselling as the family business, and just being excited about new technology, and he was a part of that.
Oh man, that's an old school name.
I miss cranky geeks, to the point where I've gone back to listen to older episodes.
> I miss cranky geeks
Read my cranky posts about what an abomination Unicode has become!
I miss them so much, I became one!
How can you miss cranky geeks when HN is full of them?
We miss each other.
But it’s ok. We’ll meet again at the great Apple Store in Heaven.
In heaven, macOS is GNU-licensed. GPL3+, nothing less.
Apple Store? Surely you mean Babbage's.
Hell gets Windows.
Careful, it's against the guidelines to be a cranky geek now.
Fond memories of TWiT in the early 2000s and his longstanding media deconstruction and analysis on the No Agenda show, where they eschew traditional advertising, run on open source software, build community, and rely on their listenership (Producers) for on-the-ground information and a 'value for value' funding source for the show.
RIP, gonna mis listening to your conversations with Adam, link to the last no agenda show (podcast): https://www.noagendashow.net/listen/1887
RIP
Their podcast is one of the last bastion of independence: no ads, all funded, produced, developed, self hosted by a group of volunteers.
Dvorak shaped the emerging PC industry. Larger than life figure. Sad he's not here for the AI takeover.
I’ll always remember him from Twit. He always made the show entertaining. I wonder if he and Leo were ever able to reconcile their differences.
Sad, I met him very briefly ~20 years ago when he was giving a talk at my Alma Mater (no, you've never heard of it)
Funny enough the audience was made up of his contemporaries but were completely computer-illiterate. He wanted to discuss heady topics but the Q&A was mostly people asking him to explain Linux (How can it be free? Who owns it?) I could tell he was a bit annoyed to have to get so basic with his audience but I think he kind of somewhat enjoyed sharing a new concept with them.
I used to read him in my dad's PC Magazine subscription. I had some ~falling out over what my teenage self perceived as backwards take on mp3s and their proliferation. Perhaps one one of my earliest experiences with "kill your heroes" concept.
Glad for all of his contributions, I did enjoy reading his work.
i have spent nearly half my life listening to the voice of John C. Dvorak on a nightly basis as i went to bed.
literally since i was in college – around 2008 – i started listening to the No Agenda Show. i'd play the podcast in one ear with the other on my pillow with a 30-minute sleep timer and play it over several nights until the next episode came out.
my outlook, my ideology, my perspective on life was partly formed by this man's words.
thanks for everything, John.
I stopped listening to the no agenda show many years ago when I just decided that I didn't want to be worked up and angry about the world everyday of my life.
Turn off social media, turn off the news. Even local news. It's never going to make you feel good about anything. I get a weekly newsletter digest of happenings around the world and that's all I need.
My daily mood and outlook on life has increased immensely since.
I agree. The show went downhill fast in the last years, after the anecdotes ran out, and rapidly became bitter and negative, even divisive; something it originally was not.
RIP JCD.
I remember reading an article by him in the 90s where he claimed e-commerce would never take off because all internet users expect everything to be free.
hahaha that made me smile, well the era of napster and such it wasnt so far fetched i suppose
I clicked on this link with my 'experimental pointing device called a mouse'. Rest in peace from all the ships at sea.
I loved reading his columns at PC Magazine growing up, it's an end of an era. He had such an interesting view of the PC industry as a whole and his column was almost always the first thing I read when a new issue would arrive at my house.
Damn, this one hit hard. Grew up watching him on ZDTV/TechTV. RIP.
I'll always appreciate his love for Costco wines.
Here is an old column of his, "New Architecture Needed"
https://www.pcmag.com/archive/new-architecture-needed-32570
I used to watch his podcast ~20 years ago, I still bring up how excited he was about finding secret bottles of wine in costco
One of my highlights of 90s internet was forwarding some amusing computer anecdote or joke somewhere where it eventually got to John Dvorak with my email at the top of the forward chain and he reached out asking if he could credit me or get help finding the source. Unfortunately I didn't know the original source but I felt connected to the world in a new way.
In my youth, his InfoWorld columns were appointment reading. A one-of-a-kind in the industry.
Agree, and the sad thing for me now is not being able to find an equivalent space of such crankiness against the way things are going with an authoritative voice.
Used to watch him regularly on ZDTV. RIP
I remember reading some of his columns growing up and I used to intensely dislike him for his dismissive takes on a lot of products and technologies I thought were important (most infamously, he dismissed the mouse)! Later on, I saw him as one of the regular guests on Leo Laporte's TWIT podcasts, and it totally changed my perception of him. The guy was genuinely hilarious and a real lovable curmudgeon, not a true naysayer.
I hadn't read or heard anything from him in recent years, though I had heard he had a falling out with Leo Laporte. He might have reconciled more recently but I am not sure. I know Leo will genuinely mourn him, as they were friends and colleagues for many years. I really miss him now too!
I remember listening to him in the early 90’s on WFSU public radio, a show called Software Hard Talk. I enjoyed his snarky wit. Listened to him repeatedly call one of the BOB characters barf the dog much to Melinda (French) Gates’ annoyance.
His one page gossip column in the back of PC Mag was pretty great too.
This news makes me kinda sad.
He was our Andy Rooney. RIP.
https://youtu.be/ur296s3wIv4
ITM, RIP
Goodness. First came across his work watching Silicon Spin on ZDTV while I was in high school. Such a legend.
I don't know the man personally, but I was never impressed by his punditry even in the early PC MAG days and it got even worse when he started writing for MarketWatch.
He was always lots of loud platitudes or damnations with more noise than signal or thoughtful analysis. At some point, I just stopped listening and/or reading whenever his name came up.
Been racking my brain trying to understand what the purpose of this comment is. I'm not saying everyone MUST write something positive about the man, but I just have a hard time understanding what this comment in particular adds.
Been racking my brain trying to understand what the purpose of this comment is.
Some people just like to see themselves in phosphor, and were never taught not to speak ill of the dead. Etiquette is a lost art.
You are correct. I do not follow that moral praxis.
I think part of what made him amusing was he was earnest in his bad takes. If you heard him on a podcast he seemed kind of lovingly wrong, like the annoying uncle that you might not like listening to but you can't say you hate.
Caveat, I haven't read or listened to anything with him in some time, so I could be wrong or out of date, but that was how his public persona came across to me years ago.
Truth regarding his earnesty.
I never felt he mislead, but also at some point (much like ESPN’s Stephen Smith) he decided “winning” in punditry was more about by being loud than about by being right.
My grandparents sprung for a subscription to PC Magazine when I was a preteen for a year or two so that I could read his column in the very back of each issue. I'm sure my thoughts on his opinions would be radically different today but his prose was timeless and hilarious. Mad respect and RIP.
I sat next to John in our office for a year or so back in the heyday of podcasting. He was quite the character. RIP.
Listened to him all the time. RIP
I really enjoyed reading John C. Dvorak's PC Magazine column when I was just getting started in tech. His contrarian style was a nice change from most tech columnists at the time. He had a grumpy but oddly likable personality, and I even enjoyed No Agenda for a while and his occasional TWiT appearances.
That's why I have such mixed feelings about him. Somewhere along the way, being a contrarian seemed to become an end in itself. He became a Trump fan, and the No Agenda agenda increasingly drifted toward questioning well-established facts, from climate science to questioning the parents of the Sandy Hook victims. Real Alex Jones shit.
His PC magazine column was the first thing I read when I was able to get hold of old PC Magazines.
Even in the fast cycle of PCs in the 90s, you could learn something reading yesterdays newspaper from his columns. RIP
RIP. I remember he had a column in MacUser magazine in the early 90s. Probably at the same time he was writing for PC Magazine. It was the original "ragebait" since he always seemed to be pretty negative on Apple and suggested that Windows was better in many ways. I remember all the readers writing in complaining about his hot takes and at the time I didn't realize it was an intentional strategy.
Wow! What a shock and a bummer, I've been a fan for a long time.
Man, I feel like we're losing a lot of the people I grew up watching this year. What a bummer.
May he write some excellent reviews of the technology in the afterlife. Thanks for all the great reads, John!
Was this the guy that always had it out for Apple, and was somewhat notorious with bad Apple predictions?
Yes…
Nothing short of a gut punch.
He was a thoughtful and insightful writer. I eagerly awaited his PC Magazine article every single week.
Always confident, occasionally correct.
I grew up reading his column in PC Mag, then watched him on TechTV, and then listened to him on TWiT (where he was consistently the best part of the show, and how I learned about Sarbanes-Oxley, because he'd bring it up like every single episode for a good long while there), and later No Agenda. Before I'd realized it, John had be come the constant throughline as technology progressed throughout my life. I knew it was going to happen sooner or later, but it still really hurts to see him go.
Nooooo! Sigh. RIP JCD :(
I was very lucky to get a chance to interview him on our podcast back in 2010 [1]. He of course was very funny and insightful.
So kind of him to even come on our unknown show.
I used to love listening to him in early No Agenda [2] talking about his takes on all sorts of worldly things especially fine dining, spices, and all the famous people he'd had run-ins with.
[1] https://techzinglive.com/episode/6bc8086b/50-tz-interview-th...
[2] https://www.noagendashow.net/
That’s very sad. I enjoyed his contributions to PC Mag and TWiT.
Rest in peace! I definitely have some strong memories watching JCD over the years. You will be missed.
The Silicon Spin intro and Cranky Geeks theme song are burned into my head.
I was in elementary school watching ZDTV after school instead of doing my homework. One of those shows that's burned into my head, I don't even know why, is Silicon Spin.
Every now and then I have visions of my childhood, dreaming about this mysterious place called Silicon Valley that I never actually managed to get to. I also recall the fond moments watching literally everything on TechTV and ZDTV even if I didn't really fully understand everything. (I mean you're not going to understand everything in elementary school).
John C. Dvorak was probably speaking of content that my age range didn't fully comprehend at the time, but I still loved it.
I was so fortunate to meet Patrick Norton back at DEFCON in 2019, and it was a dream come true. I was able to express my appreciation not only of him but also about the whole ZDTV and TechTV cast including John C. Dvorak, many of whom had gone in different directions post TechTV. They were all such a comforting part of my childhood.
I was watching TechTV on 9/11 and remember how when Bush got on tv in the evening, they had a momentary fumble in switching over to him so they just overlaid CNN or some other news channel. Growing up Muslim in that area of the country, all the TechTV shows including Silicon Spin became even more pivotal in keeping some semblance of the happiness and ease of life I had before that day (which I never really got back).
Watching these old episodes are charming given the topics:
[0]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYW3nkMl9GQ
[1]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcJBXgmdX44
This has been a tough few years seeing people and companies that provided me a lot of joy and happiness start to pass away. I guess its just a part of realizing you are getting old and time moves on to the next generation.
I speak to a lot of Gen-Z since they are defining the culture now and so many of them just have little to no concept of the world before iPhone and as such don't remember that era of computing and the people involved in it.
I feel that makes all the people that were around even more special to me. We all got to be a part of that slice of history (them producing and me appreciating it and growing because of it) and it was unique to us in that time period. I am thankful that he was a part of my life journey in a small way.
Sad news, I grew up reading his column.
About a decade ago I heard John complaining on No Agenda about a sound card mixer problem he was having in Linux. I had the same model card so I emailed offering some debugging advice. He responded almost immediately and we went back and forth trying things. If memory serves it was a config issue with pulseaudio. It was the highlight of my week.
Going to miss him he was always a fun curmudgeon with an interesting point of view. My condolences to his family.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=343NxxEiFfM
I hated that guy so much when I was a fan of Apple. I think maybe he did it on purpose to keep the readership up. I should probably go back and read a few of his rants again with 20/20 hindsight, now that I'm not particularly fond of Apple any longer. I might end up laughing or even agreeing with him.
First Om, now Dvorak.
Such a loss, the prototypical cranky geek. Loved his takes with Curry and Leporte
Rough year for the cranky geeks cast.
Wasn't he the one who famously said the iBook looked like a toilet seat?
Still an opportunity to edit his wiki if anyone wants to be the official Bear of Bad News(tm)
I loved listening to him on TWiT and other shows/podcasts. RIP, what a legend.
He was the house curmudgeon - hilarious
Incredible loss.
What a bummer.
Last tweet by him just 2 days ago.
He was related to the Dvorak keyboard inventor.
RIP ITM
Sad news. He was the OG tech grouch. Went way off the deep end with conspiracy crap and right wing nonsense over the last decade, but I always assumed some of that was opportunistic performance. RIP.
Was a fairly big fan of his takes until then. RIP. He'll always have a place in computing history.
I'd say this def rates a black bar.
I could not agree more. You might love him, you might hate him. But he was a fixture in the Golden Age of Personal Computing.
He was definitely controversial, as evidenced by the rating on the grandfather post.
RIP
Literally never even heard of him or this show he apparently ran so I'm confused why this is so upvoted.
A very important part of computing media history... and a mixed bag.
Ah, well, you missed an important (and obviously beloved) part of microcomputer culture. I haven't thought about him for years, but read his columns in PC Magazine religiously. I didn't always like him, but I always read him.