John Gruber

John Gruber (born 1973) is a blogger, UI designer, and the inventor of the Markdown markup language. Gruber is from the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, area. He received his Bachelor of Science in computer science from Drexel University, then worked for Bare Bones Software (2000–02) and Joyent (2005–06).[1] Since 2002, he has written and produced Daring Fireball,[2][3][4] a technology-focused blog. He hosts a related podcast called The Talk Show. In early 2013, Gruber, Brent Simmons, and Dave Wiskus founded software development firm Q Branch to develop the Vesper notes app for iOS.[5] The venture was not successful,[6] and Q Branch has since shut down. 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 triweekly show is granted via subscription.

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
John Gruber in 2009
Born1973 (age 46–47)
United States
OccupationColumnist, podcaster
LanguageEnglish
NationalityAmerican
SubjectDesign, technology, Apple Inc.
Notable worksMarkdown, Daring Fireball, The Talk Show, Vesper
SpouseAmy Jane Gruber
Website
daringfireball.net
 Literature portal

Daring Fireball
Daring Fireball
Type of site
Blog
Available inEnglish
OwnerJohn Gruber
Created byJohn Gruber
URLdaringfireball.net
Alexa rank 14,555 (April 2014)[7]

Gruber has described his Daring Fireball writing as a "Mac column in the form of a weblog".[8] It was partly inspired by kottke.org and Jason Kottke.[9] 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.

The original Daring Fireball T-shirt

In 2004, Gruber began selling memberships,[10] where readers donate an amount of money annually to show support for Gruber's writing and also to gain access to other perks. The perks included more detailed feeds, but Gruber has downplayed the importance of the extra features, comparing them to "PBS tote bags".[11] Daring Fireball logo T-shirts are also sold, which include a membership and a discount on further T-shirts. All of the site's content is freely available, and in August 2007, Gruber made all of the site's feeds freely available as well, and each week the feed features a sponsor.[12]

Gruber's last account of his part-time Daring Fireball income called it a substantial side income, short of a full-time salary.[13] For most of the time when Daring Fireball was a part-time project, Gruber worked as an independent web designer; between late 2005 and April 2006, Gruber's main job was at Joyent where he helped with the TextDrive acquisition.

In April 2006, producing Daring Fireball became Gruber's full-time job, funded by advertisement revenue, membership fees, T-shirt sales, and donations from software projects also hosted on the site, such as Markdown.[14][13] From 2006[15] to 2017,[16] the site displayed advertisements from The Deck, an advertising network serving sites like A List Apart and 37signals in addition to Daring Fireball. In addition to this, many Amazon.com links once carried Daring Fireball's referral ID, and the site's preferences once included a choice of local Amazon store. Amazon removed Daring Fireball from their affiliate program for a violation of their terms of service.[17]

As of October 2018, Gruber charges US$8,000 per week for RSS feed sponsorship which includes a "promotional item during the week" and a "linked list item" to the sponsor at the end of the week.[18]

Blogger and software developer John Saddington shared results from his sponsorship of Daring Fireball, stating that sales of his indie macOS app Desk generated $16,000 in profit just during the week of advertising, and ultimately contributed to the app being featured as one of Apple's Best Apps of 2014.[19]

The Talk Show

The Talk Show is a technology podcast started by Gruber intended as a "director's commentary" to his website, Daring Fireball. 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.[20] 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 with 5by5.[21] Gruber again moved the show to the Mule Radio Syndicate[22] network in May 2012. 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.[23][24] The show continues to use the episode number scheme and logo started at Mule Radio.

While Gruber has remained a constant through all four iterations of the show, archives of the show's episodes are inconsistent. The initial 27 episodes that were co-hosted with Benjamin were removed by Dan in 2016 for reasons that remain unclear. Only some of the episodes created during the time at Mule Radio remain available. All 5by5 episodes, and those posted since Gruber took it in-house at Daring Fireball, are available as of March 2018.[24]

Guests are mainly programmers, designers, analysts and journalists. Some recurring guests include John Moltz, Marco Arment, Merlin Mann, Craig Hockenberry, John Siracusa, Rene Ritchie, Guy English, MG Siegler, Ben Thompson, Joanna Stern, Brent Simmons, Om Malik, Jason Snell, Christa Mrgan, Dave Wiskus, Matthew Panzarino, and Serenity Caldwell.

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.[25] Phil Schiller and Craig Federighi also appeared on the live episodes of The Talk Show during WWDC 2016 and 2017.[26]

The Talk Show is known for its lengthy episodes. Todd Vaziri periodically updates a graph showing episode lengths.[27][28][29]

Speaking engagements

John Gruber has increasingly appeared as a conference speaker, starting in the United States but going worldwide in recent years.[30] His presentations focus on a subset of topics that he covers on Daring Fireball, mainly the intersection of Apple, movies, and the creative process.

gollark: Well, in my case, I make random stuff which is "useful" to me and release it upon an unsuspecting world in case someone wants it.
gollark: That still doesn't provide much of an incentive to make intellectual property versus just not doing that, but it would help I guess.
gollark: There are similar issues in the realm of books and stuff, but the convention there is more to actually pay for them.
gollark: I… see.
gollark: It is a shame nobody's come up with a particularly good model for funding IP development which doesn't either make it artificially scarce or basically rely on goodwill.

References
  1. Blanc, Shawn (2008-02-19). "John Gruber: A Mix of the Technical, the Artful, the Thoughtful, and the Absurd". ShawnBlanc.net. Retrieved 2008-10-23.
  2. "The blogosphere: Are blogs worth the hype?". CNET News. 2004-08-10. Retrieved 2008-10-23.
  3. "News.com's Blog 100". CNET News. 2005-10-07. Retrieved 2008-10-23.
  4. Snell, Jason (2007-03-05). "Laptop nation". Macworld. Archived from the original on 2013-11-06.
  5. Gruber, John (2013-06-06). "Vesper". Daring Fireball. Retrieved 2018-03-19.
  6. Gruber, John (2016-08-23). "Vesper, Adieu". Daring Fireball. Retrieved 2018-03-19.
  7. "Daringfireball.net Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved April 1, 2014.
  8. Gruber, John (July 8, 2003). "Independent Days". Daring Fireball. Retrieved August 17, 2007.
  9. "'Our Name is Our Address', with Special Guest Jason Kottke". The Talk Show (Podcast). March 24, 2018.
  10. Gruber, John. "Membership Information". Daring Fireball. Retrieved August 17, 2007.
  11. Gruber, John (June 16, 2004). "Something Daring". Daring Fireball. Retrieved August 17, 2007.
  12. Gruber, John (August 16, 2007). "Feedback". Daring Fireball. Retrieved August 17, 2007.
  13. Gruber, John (October 27, 2005). "Membership Numbers". Daring Fireball. Retrieved August 17, 2007.
  14. Gruber, John (April 20, 2006). "Initiative". Daring Fireball. Retrieved August 17, 2007.
  15. Gruber, John (February 2, 2006). "Bedecked". Daring Fireball. Retrieved October 23, 2008.
  16. Anthony, Ha (March 29, 2017). "The Deck ad network is shutting down". TechCrunch. Retrieved May 19, 2017.
  17. Gruber, John (1 September 2017). "Serfing on the Giants' Farms". Daring Fireball. Retrieved 8 June 2019.
  18. Gruber, John. "Sponsorship". Daring Fireball. Retrieved January 19, 2018.
  19. Saddington, John. "Does Sponsoring Daring Fireball Actually Work?". Archived from the original on December 26, 2016. Retrieved December 25, 2016.
  20. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2015-04-29. Retrieved 2020-02-06.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  21. "The Talk Show on 5by5". 5by5 Studios. 2012-05-02. Retrieved 2018-03-19.
  22. Mule Radio Syndicate Network
  23. Webster, Mark (16 February 2011). "Webstock: An interview with the Daring Fireball". The New Zealand Herald.
  24. Hoare, John (2016-08-30). "The Sad State of 'The Talk Show' Archives". Dirty Feed. Retrieved 2018-03-19.
  25. Gruber, John (2016-02-12). "The Talk Show Episode 146". Daring Fireball. Retrieved 2016-02-12.
  26. Gruber, John (2016-06-17). "The Talk Show Episode 158". Daring Fireball. Retrieved 2016-06-19.
  27. Vaziri, Todd [@tvaziri] (2015-10-05). "The Talk Show with John @Gruber Episode Lengths. Because apparently I have nothing better to do" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  28. Vaziri, Todd [@tvaziri] (2016-02-19). "The Talk Show #146 w/@gruber, @cue and C-Fed. ★★★★✩ Excellent episode, but far too short" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  29. Vaziri, Todd [@tvaziri] (2018-02-18). ""The Talk Show with John Gruber" Episode Lengths, updated. Latest episode is a new record length" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  30. The Seasons of Daring Fireball, retrieved 2012-08-21
  31. "rentzsch.com: C4: Chicago Mac Developer Conference". C4. 2010-01-06. Archived from the original on January 6, 2010. Retrieved 2015-08-18.
  32. "C4 Abridged". Red Sweater Blog. 22 October 2006. Retrieved 2019-05-23. John Gruber – The HIG is dead.
  33. "Past SXSW Interactive Festival Speakers". SXSW. Retrieved 2015-08-18.
  34. Stross, Randall (2011-07-23). "What Apple Has That Google Doesn't: An Auteur". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2015-08-18.
  35. "Gruber grills Apple on its top 10 issues". Macworld. Retrieved 2015-08-18.
  36. "Speakers | dConstruct 2010". dConstruct. Retrieved 2015-08-18.
  37. "Gruber, Engst, Moren on the Mac's future". Macworld. Retrieved 2015-08-18.
  38. "John Gruber - Webstock". webstock. Retrieved 2015-08-18.
  39. The Gap Theory of UI Design - Webstock. webstock. Vimeo. Retrieved 2018-04-01.
  40. John Gruber - Çingleton 2011 in Çingleton 2011. Çingleton. Vimeo. Retrieved 2015-08-18.
  41. "iPhone 5; Jeffrey Toobin; Karen Elliott House". Charlie Rose. Retrieved 2015-08-18.
  42. Panzarino, Matthew. "OS X Mavericks, iCloud and the rise of the populist file system". The Next Web. Retrieved 2015-08-18.
  43. "Macworld/iWorld 2013". Macworld. 2013-01-30. Archived from the original on January 30, 2013. Retrieved 2015-08-18.
  44. In praise of Pac-Man - Webstock. webstock. Vimeo. Retrieved 2018-04-01.
  45. "Conference · XOXO 2014". XOXO. Retrieved 2015-05-13.
  46. "John Gruber". xoxofest.com.
  47. Çingleton 2014 - John Gruber. Çingleton. Vimeo. Retrieved 2015-08-18.
  48. "Úll: March 30th & 31st 2015". Úll 2015.
  49. Susan Kare, John Gruber - Layers 2015. Layers. Vimeo. Retrieved 2018-04-01.
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