Comment by bunnycorn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bunnycorn | Hacker News Reader

John C. Dvorak is a troll and the record holder of being wrong.

He is almost everything that's bad on "tech journalism" concentrated in one.

Specially regarding his brand of hate, Apple.

He mentioned that the "mouse" of the Macintosh was bad ("There is no evidence that people want to use these things."), he claimed that Apple was going to discontinue OS X and switch to Windows (according to his "sources"), he argued that Apple should cancel the iPhone even before the thing came out, etc. etc. etc. the thing only repeats after each Apple new product, and even claimed that the $1T company was dead because the iPhone 5 was going to flop (the iPhone 5 was Apple's biggest success until the date).

There is only one reason why companies hire him or fire him, he drives clicks and magazine purchases. He is the Alex Jones of tech.

Thing is that today, people can go to many other places to get their Apple hate validated, on top of that, he wrote a negative article about 5G, and the PC Magazine sponsors are waiting for that to sell more phones, so he had to go.

He may be a troll but that doesn't discount the point he's addressing that in the absence of subscription model, content will be driven by who pays for it (ie. other than the readers).

It’s been decades since subscription revenue drove the majority of magazine and newspaper revenue - probably about the time most of use were in diapers...

>It’s been decades since subscription revenue drove the majority of magazine and newspaper revenue

Yeah no. If you’re going to make claims like that you better source it. Source for the NY Times says the exact opposite: https://www.statista.com/statistics/192911/revenue-of-the-ne...

> "There is no evidence that people want to use these things."

He was correct - there was no evidence, at the time, that people wanted to use a mouse.

Also, obligatory:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOHzHVF-4Mg

In 1984 people didn't knew if they wanted or didn't want to use a mouse. Most people didn't even used PCs, much less the extremely expensive machines that had a real GUI and some software to try it out.

But it's the job of a journalist, specifically a columnist, to be above the average Joe.

Dvorak is a cranky opinion columnist. He always has been. That's his schtick, and he's never tried to hide that.

So now you're excusing his behavior because it's "expected"? Maybe now is the moment we stop giving him the time of day.

I like him and find his columns entertaining, and always have. I'm not like, picking stocks based on them.

So the fact that he's peddling basic fear mongering doesn't put you off in any way?

> He is the Alex Jones of tech.

Ha! I hope he responds to that on No Agenda.

You know that saying controversial things about Apple has basically always been his schtick. It drives pages views when people get all upset and flood into the site to read the article so that can go back to Hacker News/SlashDot/Reddit/Digg/Fark/Facebook/Twitter/whatever to argue about it.

> he claimed that Apple was going to discontinue OS X and switch to Windows (according to his "sources")

I thought something like that was on the table in NT days (remember it used to support PowerPC). That would have been pre Jobs return and pre OS X though.

No, it was in Feb 2006.

In 2006, Mac OS X was glowing hot with Tiger release.

For clarity, you mean to say that Dvorak claimed it in 2006.

I am saying I read or heard that it was discussed in real life in the 90s. This is unrelated.

Yin and Yang. We need an opposing force out there to balance John Gruber.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com