Bloated gasbag John C. Dvorak has been unceremoniously jettisoned by PC Magazine via email.
Yesterday I was fired from PC Magazine under the bogus notion that the columns were put on hiatus and I could call next year. So after 36 years of loyalty I get no phone calls from “friends” Vivek Shah or Dan @dancosta but a curt email telling me I’m out. It’s rude. — Bloated gasbag John C. Dvorak
Dvorak’s announcement via Twitter:
https://twitter.com/THErealDVORAK/status/1043180806020116480
Looks like John won’t be checking in them in Q1.
MacDailyNews Take: Well, we’ll certainly drink to that! (Interns: TTK.)
‘Tis true that the notion that the columns were put on hiatus is surely bogus. PC Magazine likely fired Dvorak because the vast majority of his columns were steaming piles of inanity excreted by a dullard.
In, uh… tribute, here are a few of the Bloated Gasbag™’s greatest emissions:
• The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a “mouse.” There is no evidence that people want to use these things. — John C. Dvorak, 1984
• Apple should pull the plug on the iPhone… What Apple risks here is its reputation as a hot company that can do no wrong. If it’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… Otherwise I’d advise people to cover their eyes. You are not going to like what you’ll see. — John C. Dvorak, 2007
• iPhone which doesn’t look, I mean to me, I’m looking at this thing and I think it’s kind of trending against, you know, what’s really going, what people are really liking on, in these phones nowadays, which are those little keypads. I mean, the Blackjack from Samsung, the Blackberry, obviously, you know kind of pushes this thing, the Palm, all these… And I guess some of these stocks went down on the Apple announcement, thinking that Apple could do no wrong, but I think Apple can do wrong and I think this is it. — John C. Dvorak, 2007
• The Apple iPad is not going to be the company’s next runaway best seller. — John C. Dvorak, 2010
• Within the decade, Microsoft should have a minimum of 300 stores. They should do as well as the Apple Stores. — John C. Dvorak, 2012
Don’t cry for John. With that much gas, he’ll surely pop up somewhere like a bathtub fart.
Prost, everyone!
SEE ALSO:
Dvorak: Is iPhone X Apple’s Vista? – November 1, 2017
Dvorak on Apple Watch: ‘Yawn – I’m not going to buy one’ – September 10, 2014
Dvorak: I really cannot see much of a need for Apple iPad – October 22, 2010
Dvorak: Apple’s MacBook Air unlikely to be much of a success – January 25, 2008
Dvorak on Apple iPhone: ‘I think Apple can do wrong and I think this is it’ – January 13, 2007
Video: Dvorak admits to baiting Apple Mac users for hits – June 10, 2006
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “Bob Hoskins” for the heads up.]
Sounds like a prefect fit for the Forbes contributor network. They’re full of crap, too. im looking at you Spence and Kelly
What took them so long?!
Readers of Forbes are in for a nasty surprise.
BWAHAHAHAHA! Only about 15 years overdue. What a know nothing about anything. Was anybody seriously reading his column for th last 10 years?
When Dvorak “called ’em as he saw ’em” they were almost universally proved wrong. Easily the most clueless columnist and old fool to ever “grace” the pages of tech media. Retirement and instant anonymity can’t come too quick for this tired and unwelcome Opinionator. So long John!
I’m going to crawl out on a limb here and no doubt get flamed by the fanboys. While I disagreed with the man over 90% of time, after 36 years of service he deserved a more respectful separation than an impersonal curt e-mail. Only firing worse that comes to mind is the legendary football coach Joe Paterno…
GeoB, we agree again!
Oh come on he should thank his stars that he got a free ride for nearly 40 years. Many people of real talent never get a chance at all he clearly played off people he knows to get this far for so long, so when it ends belatedly he should accept he has been very lucky and retire as gracefully as he can, not bleat about how unfair life is in a cloud nine height of hypocrisy.
That’s not really an answer to a reasonable point, which is that courtesy and good manners should be standard.
Wake me up in the far distant future when courtesy and good manners are standard behavior on the Internet. I appreciate the sentiment but then there’s reality and the less than even application.
“Courtesy and good manners” is a good thing, no? Are you supporting the A-Holes out there or just making excuses for them?…
It’s not a question of whether it’s a good thing (which is obvious it is or would be) but the problem of many sorry people not inclined to be on their best behavior while online. Go to the BGR comment page and visit Troll Central there to see what I mean.
I have never been a fan of Dvorak so feel no reason to career-posthumously sing his praises or laud him for years of dubious “service.” Those who do though should.
“I have never been a fan of Dvorak so feel no reason to career-posthumously sing his praises or laud him for years of dubious “service.” Those who do though should.”
I have never been a fan either and not commenting on the quality, or lack thereof of his work, that’s not point! The point is and I repeat, after 36 years of faithful service he deserved a more respectful and professional separation.
Sorry to read you and others that a simple concept of decorum eludes you…
Yeah but GoeBy why should we celebrate or respect mediocrity? The man exceeded the Peter Principle almost as soon as he started and should’ve made way for more intelligent and visionary voices instead of wasting the printed then online space. Hard to believe he wasn’t given the unceremonious bum’s rush out the door ages ago.
@Fesarius – I agree, but I would replace the word mediocrity with the phrase intentionally incompetent.
When Steve introduced the iPhone, that night there was a panel discussion with tech journalist on their impression. John was one of the panel members. After going on and on about what was wrong with it and that it would be a failure, he finally had to admit that he hadn’t seen the presentation despite the video being available online for some time. He said he read about it and that was all he needed to know.
I think he was the only one in the room who hadn’t seen it. (that includes the audience)
I like John Dvorak. He is a contrarian, which is attractive because cloying adulation leads to heart disease, and he has many entertaining opinions, and that is exactly the key to his success over the years. He isn’t always wrong, which you can’t say for most of the other pundits. When he is wrong, he is spectacularly wrong, not the kind of “whatever” wrong that other cheap pundits get away with every day. He has always stood up proudly to the catcalls, and moved on. Also, he is the only writer whose stealth tongue-in-cheek humour is over the heads of shrill antidisestablishmentarians. And he is the only Apple antagonist who had a column in a leading Apple magazine. I nominate him for the Howitzer Prize in Tech Journalism.
You are ‘himself’ and I claim my 5 dollars.
Well said.
I never read any of his columns or had heard of him until I discovered TWIT with Leo Laporte.
I enjoyed his appearances. Yep, he came across as a bit of a curmudgeon but he was entertaining.
Yeah! And wait ‘till Leo gets back from vacation and hears THIS! LOL!
Entertaining in an incompetent, bumbling, confused uncle sort of way. As in “what stupid thing or wrong-headed prediction will come out of his mouth next?” He was the online tech clown show not to be taken seriously.
Howitzer prize? Is that some sort of award that explodes when the winner receives it? If it is, then I nominate him to receive that as well.
I disagree. Dvorak was a hack. More precisely, he was a professional troll.
There is nothing wrong with taking a contrarian view, especially if you’re able to articulate a compelling argument in support of your position. That’s was not Dvorak’s MO. If you’ve read his column, especially in the early years, you’d know that he was simply anti-Apple. Years later, he went on to brag about his method of getting page views for his articles and that was to troll Apple users. It was a sleazy tactic and was readily transparent. The only shame here is that he was able to make a career out of this sort of behavior.
Seriously, the guy talked out of his ass about Apple probably costing stockholders millions of dollars. Understand doing it wrong once or even twice, but he was so off-base everything regarding Apple products.
Another kissass apologist, searching and stretching in any direction to virtue signal on this assclown Dvorak. I can see you now …. ‘I’m going out on a limb here, but you gotta give Hillary credit, she is a woman’. Laughing my ass off.
I don’t think it’s fair to compare him to a child molester.
But the email was fine. He wasn’t fired, he was never an employee. He was writing one column as a freelance independent contractor. I’d say the VAST majority of contact he had with the magazine was via email, so there’s nothing wrong with telling him “we’re not going to be buying your product for the next three months” via email.
Obviously with his “broken clock” level of accuracy, this should have happened many years ago. I sometimes wonder if he didn’t initially get noticed because he shares a name with a keyboard layout that was getting a lot of attention around the time he started writing, and then inertia kept him going.
I think you have it exactly right. He lucked out by having the same name as a revolutionary keyboard layout that never quite caught on but did gain notoriety. Otherwise, although occasionally entertaining, John was an irritating P. I. A. most of his “career.” His actual, worthwhile contributions are almost nil.
Absolutely agree. I was reading his columns 25 years ago (great break from all the legal textbooks I had to read then when I was in law school). He was great on Windows and PC matters. I loved reading his insights and commentary. Feels like losing a friend. I don’t think he was very good with the whole move to an Apple world, but he still deserves respect, admiration, and appreciation.
Wow, liberals are utterly disgusting and reprehensible.
You generalize, typical narrow minded biased moronic thinking.
Yes, at times you are absolutely correct.
If you have not noticed, auramac is the gold standard on MDN …
It is “rude”, but it took people like Dvorak to make the coarsening discourse just routine. What goes around comes around.
Have not read him in years, for reasons which have been cited.
But Dvorak did get something right…decades ago….
In the early 80s, my company sent me to a conference at the Moscone Center. Apple was putting on astonishing displays of the Lisa and the mouse. I would write in my trip report that this was future of computing.
Dvorak gave the keynote. He said computers and communications hardware were going to merge, and systems of the future would perform both operations seamlessly.
He got that right. At the time, most people were not thinking beyond telephone modems.
He regurgitated what others already were saying. He has been the number one assclown of the Mac blogsphere. Please, don’t start kissing his ass now.
Did he suggest how that was likely going to occur seamlessly without a device like a mouse? Doesn’t suggest his lateral thinking was that on the ball.
Nah nah nah nah
Nah nah nah nah
Hey hey hey – goodbye
I thought he was dead…and I guess in a way now he is.
Hey, Dvorak has been VERY rude regarding the Mac. And he’s been wrong about the Mac so many times, I lost count. He also reminds me of interview bully Chris Matthews, so we got a twofer in his release.
G-bye John, and good riddance!
Why waste time on John Wrong Dvorak?
Failure illuminates the path to enlightenment. — the Buddha
The Buddha is a respected authority. Can’t achieve much higher respect in that religion. But he’s no authority on the MO of click baiter Dvorak.
But I prefer Jesus Christ’s authority because He successfully faked his own death which popularized magic tricks as well as mass subservience to succeeding practitioners and pedos.
As an aside, it’s easy to foretell the use of Apple’s AR in religious practices and in evangelism.
Exception defines the rule?
The Windows 98 looking email he uses says it all about his relevance to modern computing.
Let’s be honest in the Wild West of computing he first made his name in was more about luck, persistance and brown nosing rather more than insight that got you into the profession. Once established the lucky few were on a roller coaster of self sustaining momentum until someone has the guts to cut the oxygen supply. Being well past his sell buy date even in his own notion of self importance I am just surprised that his bosses were quite so scared to sack him more openly. But then I guess even the most insane media whore has his equally mindless throng of rabid supporters to worry about upsetting and that’s how he maintained his status for so long, playing to and feeing their prejudices that they wanted to believe, rather than insightful and objective commentary about how things were, or were going to be in technology. Most of his potential audience are probably old or dead or in gaming where myths and escape from reality have true purpose.
Well said, even if it’s a truth many cannot swallow. He’s been a waste of other people’s time and attention for too many years to count. The only thing you could count on with Dvorak is a sense of outrage with his latest ill-thought out missive. That is until you realized this was standard issue Dvorak-thought and so you could just ignore him (I can’t even remember the last time I read something he wrote).
I don’t believe many were reading him anymore and as a result he uncremoniously got the hook and hard-yanked off the tech stage with eyes bulging. A well-deserved ignominious end to a useless buffoon. Looking forward to that space better served by a more worthy soul.
Wow. A duller and rustier knife just went in deeper into this dude.
Prost? You mean prosit? For that, you get 14 years of bad sex.
When I was thinking about buying my first PC so many years ago I read mags to try to get a handle on what I wanted. Dvorak’s column was one that I read religiously. My readership in mags lessoned after I bought a PC in 95 and I taught myself how to run the piece of garbage and Windows 95 and in 2007 I drop PC’s and went to Macs. Thought Dorvak might have retired by now since he seemed bloody old in the 90’s.
Over the years I came to enjoy the stupidity of his opinions about how bad everything Apple was doing was wrong. His assumptions were almost aways upside down to reality and his predictions hardly ever turned out right, especially all the wonderful things that Microsoft was doing or planned on doing. Of course, that is what paid consultants do!!!!
35 years too late, PC magazine. Old gasbag still alive?
Dvorak is a dinosaur. Just like his website. Awful. http://www.dvorak.org/blog/
I’m a developer and I have to say I ENJOY his analysis on tech. He comes from a hobbyist and a “social commentator ” background, provides amusing contrarian views and was never buffaloed by the big tech companies into giving positive reviews for access. The world needs more people like that now that we’ve got tech companies that have more wealth and influence than nation-states.
And Johns website ? People get paid to write web applications with facebook libraries that do pretty things when you scroll or swipe so that you’re fooled into thinking the app is “needed”. John get’s paid to give no-bullshit analysis. Which would you trust more? I trust a site like Johns over a PostCSSReactPopperJSGatsbyNYTimesScollJacking web site any day.
🤣^
🤣^
What a crack up!
Wow, the hate here is unbelievable.
I just perused his columns at PC Magazine, and he doesn’t have one Apple column the whole year. You have Two go back to 2017 to find any, and those seem to be spot one. One was on facial recognition (he said the winners will be the police who can just point the phone at your face and unlock it), and another on the sad state of Apple Laptops, which was also true. Two interesting things for me;
PC Magazine still exists??! That was the real shocker. Really looks like a sad review site at this point.
Did they fire him over a column he wrote? There is one column which has been deleted about the dangers of 5G which you can find via google, but it actually links to another column on 5g, not his negate rant. In the list of his columns, that week was just removed.
This is the real issue with tech journalism these days – you are either a sycophant, or likely roadkill as the advertisers hold all the cards.
John Dvorak was the only person I knew of who correctly tagged Obama’s bogus Chief Technology Officer – I can’t remember where I read the article, but Dvorak correctly pointed out that the guy’s resume was all fluff; and he was touting such “advanced” technologies as “Google Docs”. All while pulling down a six-figure salary.
fscking fanbois bending over for apple
About 4 years late, but what I have to share fits in here better than anywhere else. Back in the early 1990’s there were flatbed scanners and printers, that’s it (there also were some little handheld scanners you’d drag across documents but they were ridiculous). For faxes you’d use your flatbed scanner, fax software, fax circuit board plugged into your computer, and your printer. Took up a lot of desk space and didn’t work very well. I wrote to John, asking him if it might be possible to combine fax, print, and scan into one device. A month or two later his column (I subscribed to PC Magazine) went on a rant about “if I hear one more person ask about a combination printer-scanner-fax machine I’m going to scream!” and went on and on about how they are completely different technologies and therefore will never be combined (!!!) so get over it! Well, of course, a few years later, there they were in the marketplace, and eventually became the norm. So, ever since then, it troubled me: how can someone who was so wrong about that, and in such a big way, still get respect as a technology commentator? And I see from this article and comments, his failure to foresee all-in-one printers was not his only failure. Which makes it even more curious he continued as a respected commentator for so long. It took 36 years for PC Magazine to conclude he was a blowhard quack? Says at least as much about PC Magazine as it does JCD.