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.
I just spent an hour on-line reading that PC Magazine from December 1999. Amazing that it's over 227 pages. There's a piece on portable CD-RW drives, and the ads, the classifieds section, a lot to take in during that epoch at the end of the 90's. I miss those big spread ads from Compaq and CDW. But my favorite piece in this issue is the "technical excellence awards" feature. They highlight this new webapp called "Google": https://archive.org/details/PC-Mag-1999-12-14/page/110/mode/...
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.
Same here... very saddened by this news. Regular listener to the No Agenda podcast. Will miss that voice dearly. I guess this will also mean the end of the No Agenda podcast is near.
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.
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.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 39.8 ms ] threadThe 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
> 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
[1]https://archive.org/details/PC-Mag-1999-12-14/page/88/mode/2...
I miss cranky geeks, to the point where I've gone back to listen to older episodes.
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...
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.