John C. Dvorak

John Charles Dvorak was born in Fresno, California, on April 5, 1946. He came from a family with a notable place in computing lore: his uncle was August Dvorak, the educational psychologist who devised the Dvorak simplified keyboard layout, an alternative to QWERTY. Dvorak grew up in California and remained a Californian for life, spending his adult years in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Dvorak earned a bachelor's degree in history from the University of California, Berkeley, according to The Hollywood Reporter. He also studied computer science at Berkeley as a graduate student. He was a member of the Berkeley Macintosh Users Group.

Dvorak started out as a wine writer before turning to personal computers in the early 1980s. At InfoWorld he wrote Inside Track, a column of industry rumors and observations, and at one point was writing about 20 columns at once. In August 1986 he moved to PC Magazine, where he wrote both a signed essay column and Inside Track, each appearing 22 times a year for many years. His final PCMag pieces in 2016 were retrospectives on the industry he had covered since its early days.

He also wrote for MarketWatch, Forbes and Forbes.com, MacUser, MicroTimes (under the banner Dvorak's Last Column), PC/Computing, Boardwatch, Barron's, The Vancouver Sun, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the International Herald Tribune, the San Francisco Examiner and the Philadelphia Inquirer, plus BUG Magazine in Croatia and Info Exame in Brazil. Later he wrote the Substack newsletter The Oasis.

On air, he was on CNET's start-up team and contributed to CNET Central (1995 to 1999). He hosted the radio programs Real Computing and NPR's Technically Speaking, and TechTV's Silicon Spin. He was a frequent panelist on This Week in Tech, launched CrankyGeeks in March 2006, and in 2007 joined Mevio as vice president and managing editor of its tech channel, hosting the short daily show Tech5 and later X3. From 2009 he co-hosted DH Unplugged with money manager Andrew Horowitz. In October 2007 he and Adam Curry launched No Agenda, which he co-hosted until the day before his death.

Dvorak married Marolee "Mimi" Smith on August 8, 1988. He had two children, Jae and John, a stepson, Aric, and four grandsons, with a granddaughter expected in October 2026. He lived in Albany, California, in the East Bay. A well-known food and wine lover, he regularly reviewed restaurants on No Agenda after dinners with Adam Curry. He was listed as a minister of the Universal Life Church, and said on No Agenda episode 600 that he occasionally posted online under the pseudonym Mark Pugner. Fans and colleagues affectionately called him Buzzkill and JCD.

Dvorak built his reputation on skepticism. He questioned the computer mouse in a 1984 San Francisco Examiner column and argued in 2007 that Apple should pull the plug on the iPhone. His former editor Michael J. Miller recalled that he enjoyed being provocative and was never afraid to buck industry trends or criticize the industry's most powerful figures. On No Agenda he applied the same skepticism to mainstream news coverage and politics, and his family said he helped shape conversations about both technology and political analysis.

Dvorak was one of the first widely read personal computer columnists, and his Inside Track column helped define the gossip-and-analysis style of trade press coverage in the 1980s and 1990s. He was also an early podcaster, and No Agenda pioneered the listener-funded value-for-value model, with listeners credited as producers. Tributes after his death came from PCMag, TWiT, Windows Weekly, DH Unplugged, The Hollywood Reporter, the San Francisco Chronicle and thousands of listeners, and No Agenda announced that the show would continue.

Dvorak created and was lead judge of the Dvorak Awards from 1992 to 1997. In 2001 he received the Telluride Tech Festival Award of Technology. He was made a Kentucky Colonel, the highest honorary title awarded by the Commonwealth of Kentucky. In July 2016 he and Adam Curry won the Best Podcast award in the News and Politics category of the Podcast Awards for No Agenda.

Books include Hypergrowth: The Rise and Fall of the Osborne Computer Corporation (with Adam Osborne), Dvorak's Guide to Desktop Telecommunications (1990), Dvorak's Guide to PC Telecommunications (1992), Dvorak's Guide to OS/2 (1993, with David B. Whittle and Martin McElroy), Dvorak Predicts (1994), Online! The Book (2003, with Wendy Taylor and Chris Pirillo) and the e-book Inside Track 2013. He helped develop the typing game Dvorak On Typing. Broadcast and podcast credits include CNET Central, Real Computing, Technically Speaking, Silicon Spin, This Week in Tech, CrankyGeeks, Tech5, X3, DH Unplugged and No Agenda.

Dvorak's contrarian predictions, including his doubts about the mouse and the iPhone, were often cited against him, and he relished the debate. In September 2015 Leo Laporte banned him from TWiT after Dvorak publicly called Laporte biased on Twitter. The two later reconciled, and Dvorak returned to This Week in Tech on December 23, 2018, in an episode titled A Christmas Miracle.

Dvorak died suddenly and peacefully on the morning of Monday, July 20, 2026, at his home in Albany, California, with his wife Mimi at his side. He was 80. The cause of death was not made public. The No Agenda newsletter announced his death on July 22, 2026, and his own X account posted "John C. Dvorak, April 5th, 1946 - July 20th, 2026." No Agenda episode 1888 was a remembrance hosted by Mimi Dvorak and Adam Curry, followed by episode 1889, a producers' tribute. Chapel of the Chimes in Oakland cared for the family, who said memorial details would be shared later.