I heard from a friend of the family that Bob passed away in his sleep early Saturday. Very sad news. Bob, who's real name was Mark Stevens, was an early employee of Apple and was best known for his PBS documentaries, especially "Triumph of the Nerds". He will be missed.

I liked his "Plane Crazy: Building a Plane in 30 Days" on PBS.

Watching him try (and fail) to build a composite airplane says so much about the allure of modern techniques (I won't spoil the end, but old-school gets the last laugh). I've been less than enthusiastic about modern composites ever since seeing this show.

Bob's attempt (and short temper) reveals a good deal of hubris on his part.

The documentary is a fascinating failure and a masterclass in attempting to salvage a show when the whole premise for the show completely collapses.

[1] https://youtu.be/FSNzF-KSGiw

I was a big fan of this guy's work. Great documentaries. Triumph of the Nerds was a great watch — I gifted this to several people. I also watch the lost Steve Jobs documentary every few years for inspiration. Accidental Empires was a great read — I always think of Larry Ellison doing the NYT Crossword puzzle when I read about all the Paramount drama. He'll be missed.

Sad to hear that, apart things already mention I'd like to point out his NerdTV interviews - especially Dan Drake one (Autodesk co-founder). I always suspected, but that interview kind of validated how Autodesk went after competition as a strategy (to buy them outright). You can watch them all here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NerdTV

Rest in peace Robert X. Cringely. For those interested, the documentary "Triumph of the Nerds" is available on the Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/triumph_of_the_nerds

Incredibly sad news. I first learned of him and watched his documentaries just a few years ago. It’s difficult to understate, if you happen to be a tech nerd, how much fun “Triumph of the Nerds” and “Nerds 2.0.1” are to watch, even nowadays.

This is a famous documentary from him: https://youtu.be/toSRmKKiosQ?is=kj1fkHSfpGsLoBVf

RIP. Damn and Dvorak died earlier this year? What a sad year for legendary computer columnists.

His “Lost Interview” with Steve is incredible.

Listening to Steve talk about the benefits of object oriented programming is something else

When searching to verify the veracity of this, this post made me laugh: https://www.cringely.com/2020/01/23/not-dead-yet-what-bob-cr... (Circa 2020).

I loved the book Accidental Empires, and it inspired me to become a programmer. RIP Bob. You were the best.

Damn. I've been re-watching his documentaries recently. He was one of the greats.

I remember religiously reading his Infoworld columns back in the day.

Just to confirm ... this Bob Cringely?

https://www.cringely.com/bout-bob/

I truly enjoyed his Triumph of the Nerds. I thought he had a pretty good handle on tech and looked forward to his opinion pieces. He regularly had a different take on tech, which helped to broaden my views. RIP, you will be missed.

Reading accidental empires is how i learned that the tech industry even existed

Somebody who has chronicled and commented on the business for a long time. I enjoyed his work, and chuckled at some of the for-and-against it caused. Sorry to hear and I hope his family is ok. There’s a whole lotta water that’s passed under the bridge that we’ve not really noticed.

I remember my mother buying me "Accidental Empires" from a bargain bin at the local bookstore as a tween. I must have read it multiple times. Dot product that with "The Cuckoo's Egg" and any technical books and magazines I could get hold of, and you have the formative reading of my career.

Future generations will have a better understanding of the personalities and history of the personal computer industry because of his work.

Loved his book, and documentary.

BTW, there are 2 "Robert X. Cringely", one owned by InfoWorld, one owned by Mark Stephens.

https://www.wired.com/1998/12/cringely/

Had to login to pay my respects. His blog "this rag" as he used to call it was foundational in my professional life. And I still typed cringley.com by hand to read his posts. He had a several tragedies in his life... But now his soul can be with his children.

RIP hacker from a bygone era..

Ah man...

Hadn't heard from him in years. Then he posted that he was going to start writing again and I was so very glad to hear it... And now...

The dude was to me what tech journalism was. Between Cringely and Dvorak leaving us, we're losing the old guard. I'm bummed.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48236501

I loved "I, Cringely"

What a great storyteller. Im surprised Triumph is mostly forgotten today. I remember being disturbed by his accounting of how Microsoft gave birth to DOS.

I've got fond memories of reading "The Little Engine That Could", his article on the wonders of mesh networking, potentially cheaply by flashing Linksys WRT54G with OpenWRT

>...the WRT54G with Sveasoft firmware is all you need to become your cul de sac's wireless ISP. Going further, if a bunch of your friends in town had similarly configured WRT54Gs, they could seamlessly work together and put out of business your local telephone company.

https://web.archive.org/web/20040608142623/http://www.pbs.or...

Oh man...this one hit me tonight! I remember watching Triumph of the Nerds in high school and loving every second of it! I read his column on PBS for years and followed him to his blog later...and kinda fell off as I fell off of so many things. Bob was influential in turning my childhood passion for computers into my career.

It's especially tragic for his family as Bob had announced that his son Cole, aged 21, had passed away back in April. Condolences to all those who knew Mark, Cole, and their loved ones. RIP.

I greatly enjoyed his book Accidental Empires https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accidental_Empires

That's sad. I watched the first two parts of Nerds 2.0.1 earlier this year and haven't gotten around to part three. Triumph of the Nerds and Nerds 2.0.1 are a fantastic look at 90's tech. He managed to interview most of the top people.

I liked his frequently contrarian views. Pre-internet his Cringely column (which he took over from someone else) was a great source of information for those of us living far away from Silicon Valley. RIP.

RIP. I loved Triumph of the Nerds as a teenager.

I honestly hadn't heard of him before, and it's sad to be learning about him this way. I'll be watching Triumph of the Nerds tonight. RIP.

His takes on IBM were always interesting, especially during that turbulent time with Ginny. He is missed.

Sad news. Reading his columns post dotcom bubble was always interesting even when I disagreed—which was often!

I immigrated to the US to work in Silicon Valley directly because of Triumph of the Nerds that I watched in PBS. I have a life that I could never have achieved in my home country and I am grateful to Bob Cringely for this. May he rest in peace.

Oh man this is really sad to me. End of an Era. His documentaries fueled me so much in the 90s and 2000s. I loved his stuff and his blogs.

Did an amazing job documenting the computer revolution and the internet revolution.

This is sad news. I was born in 1989 and thus I don’t remember Cringely’s articles, but I remember watching Triumph of the Nerds in the mid-2000s. I love that documentary; it’s a nice capture of the early days of personal computing and of Silicon Valley culture of the era. I wish there were a follow-up that covered the 2000s and beyond, particularly the rise of social media, the gig economy (Uber, Lyft, AirBNB), cloud computing, big data, cryptocurrency, and generative AI.

Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_X._Cringely

  Born Mark Stephens 
    January 28, 1953 (age 73)
    Apple Creek, Ohio, U.S.

Died October 3, 2026 (aged 73)

RIP

RIP.

This is really sad - Triumph of the Nerds played a big part in my move to California from the East Coast at the beginning of my career in the 1990s and I've rewatched the series regularly ever since... RIP Bob.

I remember in the very early days of ZeroTier him stopping by our tiny coworking office in SoCal (we weren't scattered all over yet). He said it piqued his interest because it was "something that should have been built 10 or 15 years ago." (I'm paraphrasing. This was around 2015.)

He belongs to the old Silicon Valley. I wasn't there in those days and have never lived there, but I miss it.

It was back when SV was genuinely creative and largely positive in its attitude toward people and the future. It emerged from the ethos of places like SRI's "augmented human intelligence" lab and things like the Whole Earth Catalog and the Homebrew Computer Club.

Of course I'm well aware of the other origin story, the one that goes back to WWII and the defense industry. They're both true in different ways, but I think the ideas I mentioned above were the ones that came to dominate for a while.

I'd say until the mid-late 2000s.

I have this goofy speculation that the old Silicon Valley more or less went bankrupt in the dot.com crash in 2001. After that it was bought out and taken over by different interests with different goals. Probably bullshit, but it'd make a good novel plot or something.

What?

He was only in his early 70’s.

This hits hard. Bob meant a lot to me I exchanged emails with him back in the 1990s and he gave me advice on a software project.

His documentary gave me a kind of access to Apple, a company I loved dearly as a kid, even as it was dying. Like WarGames, it seemed impossible to me all of its footage existed. I’m a stranger indebted. RIP.

Oh no. RIP!!

.

RIP…