John C. Dvorak

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John Charles Dvorak
John C. Dvorak.jpg
John C. Dvorak, July 2007
Born (1952-04-05) April 5, 1952 (age 61)
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Residence San Francisco Bay area
Washington state
Nationality American
Alma mater University of California, Berkeley
Occupation columnist, host, podcaster
Height 6'1"
Website
Official website

John Charles Dvorak (born April 5, 1952) is an American columnist and broadcaster in the areas of technology and computing.[1] His writing extends back to the 1980s, when he was a mainstay of a variety of magazines. Dvorak is also the vice president of Mevio (formerly PodShow) and well known for his work on TechTV and TWiT.

Contents

Personal life and background [edit]

John Charles Dvorak was born in 1952 in Los Angeles, California.[2] He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a degree in history, with a minor in chemistry, and has homes in the San Francisco Bay area and Port Angeles, in Washington State. He is married to Mimi Smith-Dvorak.

Dvorak is a skilled BBQ and grilling enthusiast, noted collector of Bordeaux wines and has been a tasting judge at various international events. He started his career as a wine writer, and has continued.[3]

Dvorak obtained a technician class amateur (ham) radio license, callsign KJ6LNG, in November 2010.

John is listed as a minister of the Universal Life Church.[4]

Writing career [edit]

Periodicals [edit]

Dvorak has written for various publications, including InfoWorld, PC Magazine (two separate columns since 1986), MarketWatch, BUG Magazine (Croatia), and Info Exame (Brazil). Dvorak has been a columnist for Boardwatch, Forbes, Forbes.com, MacUser, MicroTimes, PC/Computing, Barron's Magazine, Smart Business, and The Vancouver Sun. (The MicroTimes column ran under the banner Dvorak's Last Column.) He has written for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, MacMania Networks, International Herald Tribune, San Francisco Examiner and The Philadelphia Inquirer among numerous other publications.

His PC Magazine column is licensed worldwide.

Dvorak created a few tech running jokes; in episode 18 of TWiT (This Week in Tech) he claimed that, thanks to his hosting provider, he "gets no spam."[5]

Books [edit]

Dvorak has written or co-authored over a dozen books, including Hypergrowth: The Rise and Fall of the Osborne Computer Corporation with Adam Osborne and Dvorak's Guide to Desktop Telecommunications in 1990, Dvorak's Guide to PC Telecommunications (Osborne McGraw-Hill, Berkeley, California, 1992), Dvorak's Guide to OS/2 (Random House, New York, 1993) with co-authors Dave Whittle and Martin McElroy, and Dvorak Predicts (Osborne McGraw-Hill, Berkeley, California, 1994). His latest book is Online! The Book (Prentice Hall PTR, October, 2003) with co-authors Wendy Taylor and Chris Pirillo.

Awards [edit]

The Computer Press Association presented Dvorak with the Best Columnist and Best Column awards, and he was also the 2004 and 2005 award winner of the American Business Editors Association's national gold award for best online columns of 2003 and 2004, respectively.

He was the creator and lead judge of the Dvorak Awards (1992–1997).

In 2001, he was awarded the Telluride Tech Festival Award of Technology.

TV and online media [edit]

Dvorak was on the start-up team for CNET Networks, appearing on the television show CNET Central. He also hosted a radio show called Real Computing and later 'Technically Speaking' on NPR, as well as a television show on TechTV (formerly ZDTV) called Silicon Spin. Dvorak is currently a voice on the podcast "No Agenda".

He now appears on Marketwatch TV and is a regular panelist on This Week in Tech, a podcast audio and now video program hosted by Leo Laporte and featuring other former TechTV personalities such as Patrick Norton, Kevin Rose, and Robert Heron. As of December 2005, that "TWiTcast" regularly ranks among the top 5 at Apple's iTunes Music Store. Dvorak also participated in the only Triangulation podcast, a similar co-hosted technology discussion program. In March 2006, Dvorak started a new show called CrankyGeeks in which he led a rotating panel of "cranky" tech gurus in discussions of technology news stories of the week. The last episode (No. 237) aired on September 22, 2010.

Mevio hired Dvorak as Vice President & Managing Editor for a new Mevio TECH channel in 2007. He manages content from existing Mevio tech programming. He also hosted the show, "Tech5", where Dvorak discussed the day's tech news in approximately 5 minutes. The show has been out of production since late 2010.[6] Dvorak also co-hosts a podcast with Mevio co-founder Adam Curry called No Agenda. The show is a free flowing conversation about the week's news, happenings in the lives of the hosts and their families, and restaurant reviews from the dinners John and Adam have together when they are in the same city (usually San Francisco). Adam usually has more outlandish opinions of the week's news or world events while Dvorak is intended to play the straight man in the dialogue.

Since early 2011, John has been one of the featured "CoolHotNot Tech Xperts," along with Chris Pirillo, Jim Louderback, Dave Graveline, Robin Raskin, Dave Whittle, Steve Bass, and Cheryl Currid. At CoolHotNot's web site, Dvorak shares his "Loved List" of favorite consumer electronics, his "Wanted List" of tech products he'd like to try, and his "Letdown List" of tech products he found disappointing.[7]

John hosted the show X3 which, like the defunct Tech 5, was a short tech-focused cast. Unlike Tech 5 though, it is in a video format, together with two additional "pundits". The last update was 06/24/12.[8]

Until 08/03/12[9] he hosted a show Generation-X3 with a similar focus, also in video format, consisting of him and three Millennial Generation pundits.

Since September 2009, John has hosted the DH Unplugged podcast with personal money manager Andrew Horowitz.

Failed technological predictions [edit]

Dvorak's pithy style often attracts critics who criticize his erroneous provocative predictions. One of his most famous predictions was made in 1984, while he was a writer for the San Francisco Examiner, stating as a reason the Macintosh would fail: "The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a 'mouse'." [1]

Another example includes his 2007 advice offered in his 2007 article for Marketwatch, regarding the iPhone. "If [Apple's] smart, it will call the iPhone a 'reference design' and pass it to some suckers to build with someone else's marketing budget. Then it can wash its hands of any marketplace failures. [... ] It should do that immediately before it's too late."[10]

Although he later admitted having been wrong about its success, he criticized Apple's iPad when it first appeared in 2010, stating that it was no different from other previous tablets that had failed: "I cannot see it escaping the tablet computer dead zone any time soon."[11]

References [edit]

  1. ^ Lewis, Peter H. (1993-04-25). "Sound Bytes; 'Take No Prisoners,' A Bold Wordsmith Says". The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-05-06. 
  2. ^ "John C. Dvorak". Smart Computing Encyclopedia. Smart Computing. Retrieved 2006-04-25. 
  3. ^ Paulina Borsook (2009-01-04). "Wired 2.02: Street Myths: John C. Dvorak". Wired.com. Retrieved 2011-12-30. 
  4. ^ www.universallifechurchministers.org, a Web site listing many notable personalities who are ministers of this church
  5. ^ Leo Laporte, Patrick Norton, John C. Dvorak, Steve Gibson, Robert Heron, David Prager, Roger Chang, Bob Young, Mike Lazazzera (2005). This Week in Tech Episode 18 (TV-Series). California: This Week in Tech. http://www.twit.tv/18.
  6. ^ "PodShow, Inc. Taps John C. Dvorak to Launch PodShow TECH". Retrieved 2007-05-25. 
  7. ^ "CoolHotNot Tech Xperts Team". Retrieved 2011-03-03. 
  8. ^ "X-3 Episode List". Retrieved 2013-03-27. 
  9. ^ "Generation X-3 Episode List". Retrieved 2013-03-27. 
  10. ^ "Apple should pull the plug on the iPhone - John Dvorak's Second Opinion". MarketWatch. Retrieved 2011-12-30. 
  11. ^ Dvorak, John C. (2010-02-02). "Apple's Good for Nothing iPad". PCMag.com. Retrieved 2010-02-02. 

External links [edit]

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