John covers his extensive history as a Mac enthusiast, web developer, writer, podcaster and lover of music and art. He also explains his transition to a fully independent career on the Internet and how he has juggled various personas, roles and fandoms over the years.

Podcast case study: Accidental Tech Podcast (producer)

Find John at hypercritical.co.

Read a transcript of the episode as a styled PDF or in plain text.

Links and Show Notes

I Was Primed 00:00:00

• Mur Lafferty


• Geek Fu Action Grip (now in the Internet Archive)


• I Should Be Writing


• iPod


• iTunes


• NPR


• Apple Inc.


• YouTuber


• Dan Benjamin


• RSS


• Hypercritical (podcast)


• Gabe Newell


• Valve Corporation


• Half-Life (series)


• Portal (series)


• Ars Technica


• Book review: Infinite Loop — John’s first article for Ars Technica


• Ivory tower


• Hypercritical (the mentioned article from John’s Ars Technica blog, now linked on his website)


• Steve Jobs

I Had the Cultural Context 00:08:22

• Home computer (redirected from ‘personal computer revolution’)


• Commodore VIC-20


• Macintosh 128K


• Graphical user interface (GUI)


• Pictionary


• Usenet


• U2


• Ken Fisher


• Mac (computer)


• Mac OS X


• NeXT


• Macintosh clone


• OS X Reviewed (a blog post that links to all of John’s reviews)


• Engadget


• ebook


• Amazon (company)


• Unix


• MacUser


• Macworld


• MacWEEK

Multiple ‘Me’s 00:20:13

• Accidental Tech Podcast (ATP)


• A text file online that preserves information from John’s U2 Lyrics Archive


• Perl


• CPAN


• 5by5


• Jason Snell


• The Incomparable


• Robot or Not?


• Merlin Mann


• Back to Work


• Marco Arment


• Build and Analyze was a weekly news and discussion show about technology by Marco Arment and Dan Benjamin, which can now be found in the Internet Archive.


• Casey Liss


• Hypercritical (website)


• Independence Day (blog post about John’s career transition)


• Open source

A Childhood Dream 00:33:42

• BASIC


• HyperCard


• Computer programming


• Web developer


• Below are blog posts about John’s two Mac apps:
  
  
  
  
  • Front and Center; and
  
  
  • SwitchGlass, along with the more recent SwitchGlass 2.0.
  
  


• Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC)


• API


• iOS


• CodeWarrior


• App Store (iOS/iPadOS)


• Mac App Store

Apple Tech-nerd World 00:42:18

• AnandTech


• Tom’s Hardware


• Microsoft Windows


• Windows 95


• Celeron


• Context collapse


• Fandom


• Anti-fan


• Some references to terminals include:
  
  
  
  
  • computer terminal;
  
  
  • terminal emulator; and
  
  
  • Terminal (macOS).
  
  


• ‘Seeing the matrix’ means seeing the true nature of reality (or any particular situation) and is a phrase from The Matrix franchise.


• Marvel Comics


• DC Comics


• Ford Mustang


• Chevrolet Camaro