https://xcancel.com/na_announce/status/2079952538040672302

https://www.twit.community/t/john-c-dvorak-has-passed-away/2...

https://www.facebook.com/aric.mackey/posts/john-c-dvorak-194...

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

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 remember first coming across him on ZDTV/TechTV, then realizing he also wrote articles in some of those magazines I had bought. But mostly I just saw him as the resident tech curmudgeon.

Haha, yeah.

  "Gigabit Ethernet. Even 100-Mbps Ethernet has not produced a killer app. The modern network has produced convenience and the ability to share the Internet on one connection. Some people reckon this to be a killer app. I don’t. Perhaps the networked game is the killer app here."

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.

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!

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.

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.

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?...

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

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.

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.

This is sad, like a piece of my geek childhood dying. I would sometimes email him when he was writing for PC Magazine and as a 14 year old it was cool that he always emailed back, engaged in thoughtful conversation.

RIP, gonna mis listening to your conversations with Adam, link to the last no agenda show (podcast): https://www.noagendashow.net/listen/1887

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.

Aww brother... out of many recent ones, this one is a tough one for me. I used to read his columns in Infoworld and Mac User before the blogs. He was a frequent guest on TWiT, but it looks like he and Leo had a falling out. No Agenda too, but that took a turn a while back when Adam found religion. I always relied on his (not always PC) cracks to lift my mood.

RIP my mentor that you didn't know you were, Valhalla awaits.

Dvorak shaped the emerging PC industry. Larger than life figure. Sad he's not here for the AI takeover.

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.

TIL the Dvorak layout does not derive its name the same way as the qwerty layout - I guess I never looked at a Dvorak keyboard before.

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’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.

He didn't get any spam.. the early, great days of TWiT! RIP.

I am curious did anyone else listen to the DH Unplugged Podcast with John and Andrew Horowitz? It was a lighthearted financial markets podcast. I listened to it semi-regularly, and even last week he sounded good.

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.

I clicked on this link with my 'experimental pointing device called a mouse'. Rest in peace from all the ships at sea.

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.

Legend. R.I.P. John.

RIP John C.

Been listening to No Agenda since episode 1. Cranky Geeks and Silicon Spin before that. And the occasional appearance on Computer Chronicles long ago. I always loved your passion for technology and your take on the world. You will surely be missed.

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.

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.

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.

In my youth, his InfoWorld columns were appointment reading. A one-of-a-kind in the industry.

Used to watch him regularly on ZDTV. 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

Damn, this one hit hard. Grew up watching him on ZDTV/TechTV. RIP.

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

This is sad. I grew up with him as a columnist in like MacWorld or MacUser, to later on see him become an Apple troll. I think he broke his hand off patting himself on the back after his prediction of Apple moving to Intel chips came to fruition.

I was sad when he got fired from PC Mag over that 5g column.

I discovered Visual Basic 1.0 from his back page Info World column. Still have the manuals and floppy disks.

RIP JCD. As a kid growing up in the 1990s, I looked forward to your (highly opinionated) column in every new issue of PC Mag. So much of my own taste in software and computing was shaped by absorbing your strong opinions. Thanks for being you.

He was our Andy Rooney. RIP.

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.

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!

Goodness. First came across his work watching Silicon Spin on ZDTV while I was in high school. Such a legend.

https://youtu.be/ur296s3wIv4

ITM, RIP

Was this the guy that always had it out for Apple, and was somewhat notorious with bad Apple predictions?

Always confident, occasionally correct.

It wasn’t that long ago that we were here remembering Om Malik, including him being on Cranky Geeks. Now they’ve come for the king. RIP.

I parasocially ‘fell out’ with Dvorak as I got older because I just couldn’t get behind his oldschool crankiness. Nevertheless, 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.

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.

May he write some excellent reviews of the technology in the afterlife. Thanks for all the great reads, John!

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.

He was a thoughtful and insightful writer. I eagerly awaited his PC Magazine article every single week.

This one hurts. We will miss you Mr. Dvorak! RIP

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.

Listened to him all the time. RIP

That’s very sad. I enjoyed his contributions to PC Mag and TWiT.

Man, I feel like we're losing a lot of the people I grew up watching this year. What a bummer.

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/

May his memory be a blessing.

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.

Nothing short of a gut punch.

Wow! What a shock and a bummer, I've been a fan for a long time.

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.

Sad news, I grew up reading his column.

I remember him from print edition PC Magazine articles in the 80's and 90's.

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.

used to look forward to his articles in Inforworld and PCmag, and his controversial takes therein.

Rest in peace.

Rough year for the cranky geeks cast.

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.

RIP ITM

What a bummer.

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.

Incredible loss.

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

He was related to the Dvorak keyboard inventor.

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.

First Om, now Dvorak.

Such a loss, the prototypical cranky geek. Loved his takes with Curry and Leporte

RIP

Last tweet by him just 2 days ago.

I'd say this def rates a black bar.

Literally never even heard of him or this show he apparently ran so I'm confused why this is so upvoted.

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.