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?
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.”
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander is an expert on:
Apple and Apple history
Steve Jobs, Jony Ive, Tim Cook and Apple leadership
Apple community
iPhone and iOS
iPad and iPadOS
Mac and macOS
Apple Watch and watchOS
Apple TV and tvOS
AirPods
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
30 responses to “The Most Hated Pundit in the Mac Universe Is Now a Mac User”
oh the irony
The most hated pundit in the Mac community is Rob Enderle, Dvorak is often wrong, but he is entertaining.
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
I lost count… How many times has hell frozen over lately? No wonder there’s global warming! :)
Strange, Microsoft Word is the worst-running piece of software on an Intel Mac.
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. :)
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.
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.
“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.
Forget the computer… what keyboard layout does he use?
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.
I’ve been reading this guy, on and off, for about 19 years… it’s about time!
“andd wuote deliberate”
“increasingly finds himslef recommending”
Winning conscripts yet?
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)
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.