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John Gruber - Wikipedia

02 Apr 20258 min read

This article is about the writer and UI designer. For the early LGBT rights activist known as John Gruber, see James Gruber. For other uses, see Jonathan Gruber (disambiguation).

John Gruber (born 1973) is a technology blogger, UI designer, and co-creator 1 2 of the Markdown markup language. Gruber authors the Apple enthusiast blog Daring Fireball and produces its accompanying podcast, The Talk Show.

History

Gruber is from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He received his Bachelor of Science in computer science from Drexel University, and worked for Bare Bones Software (2000–02) and Joyent (2005–06).3 4

In 2004, Aaron Swartz and Gruber worked together to create the Markdown language,5 1 2 with the goal of enabling people “to write using an easy-to-read and easy-to-write plain text format, optionally convert it to structurally valid XHTML (or HTML )“.6

Media

Daring Fireball

Since 2002, Gruber has written and produced Daring Fireball,7 3 8 9 10 11 a technology-focused weblog. He has described his Daring Fireball writing as a ” Mac column in the form of a weblog”.12 The site is written in the form of a tumblelog called The Linked List, a linklog with brief commentary, in between occasional longform articles that discuss Apple products and issues in related consumer technology. Gruber often writes about user interfaces, software development, Mac applications, and Apple’s media coverage.7 On Daring Fireball, Gruber tends to cover Apple in a positive manner 3 13 14 15 and defend Apple against criticism.16 17 18 Media outlets have described Gruber as an Apple ” fanboy ” in conjunction with his writing on the website;19 Gruber responded in a 2011 interview that although he does not use the term fanboy, he supports Apple because he appreciates the company.20 3

The Talk Show

The Talk Show is a technology podcast started by Gruber intended as a ” director’s commentary ” to Daring Fireball. Guests are usually programmers, designers, analysts and journalists.

In June 2007, Gruber and Dan Benjamin began co-hosting an independent podcast featuring conversations and commentary on trends, mainly focusing on technology at thetalkshow.net.21 This format persisted but the show “started over” and helped establish Benjamin’s 5by5 Studios network. The show ran from July 2010 until May 2012 for a total of 90 episodes.22 Gruber moved the show to the Mule Radio Syndicate network in May 2012.23 This time, Gruber changed the format and became the sole host of the show with alternating guests each episode. The show ran for 80 episodes and in May 2014, The Talk Show parted ways with Mule Radio and became part of Daring Fireball.24 25 The show continues to use the episode number scheme and logo started at Mule Radio.

Apple Inc. senior vice president (SVP) of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller appeared as a guest on the live episode of The Talk Show during WWDC 2015 in San Francisco. Apple SVPs Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi appeared as guests on a recorded episode published February 12, 2016.26 Phil Schiller and Craig Federighi also appeared on the live episodes of The Talk Show during WWDC 2016 and 2017.27

Other works

In early 2013, Gruber, Brent Simmons, and Dave Wiskus founded software development firm Q Branch to develop the Vesper notes app for iOS.28 The venture was not successful, and Q Branch has since shut down.29 In March 2020, Gruber started a new podcast with friend and colleague Ben Thompson called Dithering. Each episode is exactly 15 minutes long and access to the show is granted via subscription.

References

Footnotes

  1. Hendler, James (November 10, 2022). “Foreword by James Hendler”. Aaron Swartz’s A Programmable Web: An Unfinished Work (PDF). Synthesis Lectures on Data, Semantics, and Knowledge. Springer Nature Switzerland. pp. ix. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-79444-5. ISBN 978-3-031-79444-5. Archived (PDF) from the original on January 12, 2024. Retrieved January 12, 2024 – via Wikisource. This document was originally produced in “markdown” format, a simplified HTML/Wiki format that Aaron co-designed with John Gruber ca. 2004. ↩ ↩2

  2. Krewinkel, Albert; Winkler, Robert (May 8, 2017). “Formatting Open Science: agilely creating multiple document formats for academic manuscripts with Pandoc Scholar”. PeerJ Computer Science. 3: 6. doi:10.7717/peerj-cs.112. Archived (PDF) from the original on December 2, 2017. Retrieved January 12, 2024. Markdown was originally developed by John Gruber in collaboration with Aaron Swartz, with the goal to simplify the writing of HTML documents ↩ ↩2

  3. Milian, Mark; Satariano, Adam (September 6, 2012). “Meet Apple’s Favorite Blogger”. Bloomberg News. Archived from the original on March 13, 2016. Retrieved June 12, 2024. The former software developer takes pleasure in needling Apple’s rivals—first Microsoft, now Google—and challenging those who criticize the Cupertino giant. Steve Jobs used to check Daring Fireball regularly. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  4. Blanc, Shawn (February 19, 2008). “John Gruber: A Mix of the Technical, the Artful, the Thoughtful, and the Absurd”. ShawnBlanc.net. Archived from the original on October 16, 2008. Retrieved October 23, 2008. ↩

  5. Gilbertson, Scott (October 5, 2014). “Markdown throwdown: What happens when FOSS software gets corporate backing?“. Ars Technica. Archived from the original on November 14, 2020. Retrieved June 14, 2017. CommonMark fork could end up better for users
 but original creators seem to disagree. ↩

  6. Markdown 1.0.1 readme source code “Daring Fireball – Markdown”. December 17, 2004. Archived from the original on April 2, 2004. ↩

  7. Meyer, Robinson (August 13, 2012). “Happy 10th Birthday, Daring Fireball”. The Atlantic. Archived from the original on August 17, 2012. Retrieved June 12, 2024. But Daring Fireball remains exciting, because John Gruber has made Daring Fireball his home on the Internet. It reflects exactly the ethos he finds appropriate. It is a testament, still, to the power and potential of writing on the web, to the blogger as auteur, and to the sometimes hopeful and sometimes enervating integrity that can follow. ↩ ↩2

  8. Johnson, Eric (June 30, 2016). “How Apple obsessive John Gruber built Daring Fireball, the world’s most powerful one-man media company”. Vox. Retrieved June 12, 2024. Since 2002, Gruber has owned a chunk of the conversation about Apple — and he does it all solo. ↩

  9. “The blogosphere: Are blogs worth the hype?“. CNET News. August 10, 2004. Archived from the original on November 1, 2013. Retrieved October 23, 2008. ↩

  10. “News.com’s Blog 100”. CNET News. October 7, 2005. Archived from the original on November 1, 2013. Retrieved October 23, 2008. ↩

  11. Snell, Jason (March 5, 2007). “Laptop nation”. Macworld. Archived from the original on November 6, 2013. ↩

  12. Gruber, John (July 8, 2003). “Independent Days”. Daring Fireball. Archived from the original on September 27, 2007. Retrieved August 17, 2007. ↩

  13. Kovach, Steve (October 31, 2017). “I’ve been using the iPhone X for 18 hours, and I’m already sold”. Business Insider. Archived from the original on January 10, 2024. Retrieved January 10, 2024. ↩

  14. Swearingen, Jake (October 31, 2017). “Question of the Day: Who Got an iPhone X, and When?“. New York. Archived from the original on January 10, 2024. Retrieved January 10, 2024. ↩

  15. Crothers, Brooke (December 10, 2011). “The Apple blogs vs. Android”. CNET. Archived from the original on January 11, 2024. Retrieved January 11, 2024. ↩

  16. Elmer-DeWitt, Philip (August 7, 2009). “Apple’s curious PR problem”. Fortune. Archived from the original on January 10, 2024. Retrieved January 10, 2024. ↩

  17. Newcomer, Eric (December 22, 2017). “Apple Says It Slows Old iPhones, Stoking Conspiracy Theorists”. Bloomberg News. Archived from the original on June 29, 2019. Retrieved January 10, 2024. ↩

  18. Colt, Sam (August 16, 2014). “Apple Poached Its Most Controversial Executive From Adobe, But Adobe Threw Him A Party Anyway (AAPL)“. The State Journal-Register. Archived from the original on June 6, 2024. Retrieved January 10, 2024. ↩

  19. 30 ↩

  20. Topolsky, Joshua (December 13, 2011). John Gruber on the term fanboy. On The Verge. Vox Media. Archived from the original on January 12, 2024. Retrieved January 12, 2024 – via YouTube. ↩

  21. “The Talk Show with John Gruber and Dan Benjamin”. Archived from the original on April 29, 2015. Retrieved February 6, 2020. ↩

  22. “The Talk Show on 5by5”. 5by5 Studios. May 2, 2012. Archived from the original on October 25, 2010. Retrieved March 19, 2018. ↩

  23. “Mule Radio Syndicate Network”. Archived from the original on April 7, 2018. Retrieved April 1, 2018. ↩

  24. Webster, Mark (February 16, 2011). “Webstock: An interview with the Daring Fireball”. The New Zealand Herald. Archived from the original on December 17, 2019. Retrieved February 17, 2011. ↩

  25. Hoare, John (August 30, 2016). “The Sad State of ‘The Talk Show’ Archives”. Dirty Feed. Archived from the original on March 20, 2018. Retrieved March 19, 2018. ↩

  26. Gruber, John (February 12, 2016). “The Talk Show Episode 146”. Daring Fireball. Archived from the original on February 13, 2016. Retrieved February 12, 2016. ↩

  27. Gruber, John (June 17, 2016). “The Talk Show Episode 158”. Daring Fireball. Archived from the original on June 20, 2016. Retrieved June 19, 2016. ↩

  28. Gruber, John (June 6, 2013). “Vesper”. Daring Fireball. Archived from the original on March 20, 2018. Retrieved March 19, 2018. ↩

  29. Gruber, John (August 23, 2016). “Vesper, Adieu”. Daring Fireball. Archived from the original on June 6, 2024. Retrieved March 19, 2018. ↩

  30. Blue, Violet (February 6, 2012). “The Apple fanboy problem”. ZDNET. Archived from the original on January 11, 2024. Retrieved January 11, 2024. ↩

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