The Most Hated Pundit in the Mac Universe Is Now a Mac User

Leander Kahney ()

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Columnist John Dvorak at an Apple Store. Pic by Steve Rhodes.

Columnist John Dvorak, who is perhaps the most hated pundit by Mac users because of his constant (and quote deliberate) Mac bashing, is now a Mac user himself — and he likes it.

In his latest PC Magazine Column, Dvorak confesses that he has been using an iMac at work for a couple of months, and it’s “not half bad.” After heaping on more weak praise, he says he has no plans to buy a Mac for personal use at home, but he increasingly finds himslef recommending the Mac to friends and neighbors who ask him what to buy! He writes:

“I can see why the Mac is gaining market share, because the rationale for using one is simple. Do you want to deal with the agony of antivirus, firewall, antispyware, and other touchy software subsystems, many of which do not work well? Or do you want to boot Microsoft Word and write a document and be done with it?

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As someone who does recommend gear to people, I have to think to myself, “Should I recommend something that will come back to haunt me, or recommend a Mac with its higher price but lower hassle factor?” The answer is simple. I hate the idea of having to do customer service for people who cannot keep their systems clean, and that’s most people.”

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About the author

Leander Kahney

is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac, and author of three books about technology culture: Inside Steve’s Brain, the New York Times bestseller about Steve Jobs; Cult of Mac; and Cult of iPod. Leander has written for Wired, MacWeek, Scientific American, and The Guardian in London. Follow Leander on Twitter @lkahney and Facebook.

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Posted in Apple, Hardware, Media |

  • Trev

    oh the irony

  • Mark

    The most hated pundit in the Mac community is Rob Enderle, Dvorak is often wrong, but he is entertaining.

  • Pmoes

    Here we go again. When are people who should know better going to accept that on a value for money, quality of bundled software, total cost of ownership, on-going maintenance, that Macs are NOT more expensive!!!
    He’ll own one by the end of the year

  • Esquare

    I lost count… How many times has hell frozen over lately? No wonder there’s global warming! :)

  • http://www.entertainmentweakly.com/blog tim

    Strange, Microsoft Word is the worst-running piece of software on an Intel Mac.

  • Sabon

    I believe he already owns one and that it is his main computer at home. BUT he acts like he doesn’t and writes the articles he does to create controversy which gets more hits from people either very happy or very upset at his posts and have them post comments which gets higher ratings which gets him more money which allows him to buy more Apple computers. :)

  • todd

    He does have one at home. He admitted it to Leo Laporte on a podcast. It’s a Macbook Pro. It was subtle and they all got quite when he was commenting about Leo’s machine and mentioned his MBPro at home.

  • http://www.catfancy.com miss_lain

    I believe he’s publicly said and written, more than once, that he doesn’t hate Macs. He’s not as anti-Mac as some of the Mac hating, flamewar igniting zealots you read on the Apple topic forums. J.D., more or less, didn’t prefer Macs as the computer and OS of choice. Recently, he was writing of warming to the idea of the iPhone as a fairly good device, certainly from an interface perspective. That was a bit of a shock, after seeing some of the articles he had written about its coming doom before launch day.

    J.D. is an old dog and has a reputation as a technology curmudgeon, but he can change and learn new tricks when they are good ones. I think he’s entirely correct. Most people want a computer that works out of the box, requires minimal effort to maintain, and gives them reasonable security without jumping through a bunch of hoops.

  • Church of Apple

    “The most hated pundit in the Mac community is Rob Enderle, Dvorak is often wrong, but he is entertaining.”
    -Mark

    I second that.

    The fact that all his pieces are attributed to “The Enderle Group”, which is just him and his wife who you never hear from, makes him much worse. As if that title gives him legitimacy on the level of actual Wall street analysts.

    Evey time I see that I feel like punching a hole in my monitor.

  • http://boxoffice.thepodcastnetwork.com Daniel K

    Forget the computer… what keyboard layout does he use?

  • imajoebob

    Read between the lines. He has no plans to BUY a Mac for personal use at home. That’s because Ziff-Davis already supplies him with one. Deliberate obfuscation and lies of omission are still lies.

  • http://lowendmac.com Anthony

    I’ve been reading this guy, on and off, for about 19 years… it’s about time!

  • Rufus

    “andd wuote deliberate”

    “increasingly finds himslef recommending”

    Winning conscripts yet?

  • d0b3rmann

    Guys, please, it’s been a while since Macs are equal or less expensive than a comparable brand PC with identical specs. The exception are Sony’s Vaios which are considerably more expensive than Macs (why buy an “OK” looking computer that only runs Windows instead of a Mac??).

    Granted, businesses can get juicy discounts from HP, Dell (I’m actually writing this on an HP Business line laptop that’s quite fast, Core2Duo, DVDRW DL, 1GB/100 and was about $1,200)

  • mortal

    Macs are not more expensive than pc’s. do a part for part comparison and the pc will cost an average of 10-20% more.