John Martellaro

Mark Gurman is the Consumer Technology Reporter for Bloomberg. As Mark recalls, there was never a time in his youth when he wasn’t interested in technology. He told me that it was the iPod mini for his 10th birthday that wowed him. His love for the company that created the iPod made it feel very natural to get into reporting on Apple. In the second segment, we chatted about his seminal article in December 2016 on the state of the Mac, thoughts on the next Mac Pro, competition from Microsoft in the form of the Surface Laptop, how the Apple watch Series 3 may have LTE, how devious Apple has become in hiding its pre-release trademarks, prospects for an Apple robot and Apple’s HomePod. Mark provided, as always, fascinating and insightful comments about Apple.

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Nitrozac (Liza Schmalcel) is an accomplished artist and cartoonist. Along with her partner, Snaggy, she founded Geek Culture in 1997, and it continues to thrive. She’s also the co-founder of the Joy of Tech webcomic. Nitrozac told me about growing up in northern Manitoba, Canada. She knew at a very early age that she wanted to become an artist, and she’s been drawing non-stop ever since. After high school, she attended the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto. Nitrozac suffered for a bit with not very capable computers before she went on to photography and communication design. Eventually, she met Snaggy the team has been at the center of our geek culture for two decades. And now, she’s graciously provided a new self-portrait for us. It’s the Nitrozac mystique!

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Brian Behlendorf is the Executive Director of the Hyperledger Project at the Linux Foundation. He’s also the co-author of the Apache Web server, now under the Apache Software Foundation. Plus, he holds a seat on the board of the Mozilla Foundation and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Brian has been one of the leading proponents of the open source software movement. Brian’s parents met at IBM, and so computers became a natural part of his early life: the TRS-80 (he learned BASIC and gaming), Mac IIc’s at school, and later IBM PC Jr. He studied physics at Berkeley, but in so doing fell in love with the internet. In 1991, he started thinking about a better Web server than the original from NCSA, and Apache was born. We chat about Brian’s distinguished career and current work.

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Maria Langer is legendary for the 85 books she’s written about computers from 1991 to 2012. That was merely the middle part of her career. Maria started her career with a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Hofstra University. After a few stints as a financial analyst and auditor, she decided to dump the 9-to-5 grind and delved into writing computer books. Basically, if you wanted to learn anything about computers in those days, you read her stuff. Around 2011, that came to an end, and so, inspired by a childhood ride, she started helicopter pilot lessons. Today, she owns her own helicopter and tour business, working out of both Arizona and Washington. Maria and I are both aviation enthusiasts, geeked out about aircraft in our chat, and Maria tells some interesting stories about flying choppers.

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Joe Moreno is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, a former U.S. Marine officer, a former Apple software engineer for nine years, and is now the Chief Technical Officer of ItsBorrowed.com. In high school, influenced by his father, Joe decided to join the Marines. He was also very much into computers and became a Marine programmer, working on production systems. Later, after the academy, he became a supply & logistics officer, and his skills caught the attention of Apple in 1998. He was virtually hired on the spot at a career fair for military officers. We spent some time chatting about Apple’s recent history and his work with databases, WebObjects, Unix and Apple’s online store. Listen in to hear us chat about iPhone ordering tricks from the Apple store during the annual September chaos.

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Dr. John Gustafson is a professor of computer science, now at The National University of Singapore. He holds a Ph.D. in Applied mathematics from Iowa State University and also specializes in high performance (supercomputer) computing. (HPC). He’s worked at Sun Labs, Clearspeed Technology, Massively Parallel Technology, Intel, and AMD. At an early age, he was fascinated by chemistry and also had a good sized electronics lab in his basement (thanks to indulgent parents). But by the time he started his undergraduate degree at Cal Tech, he’d settled on applied mathematics with physics as a second major. It was at Cal Tech where he met and was influenced by the Nobel Prize winning physicist, Dr. Richard Feynman. John, describes his career arc, and at the end has some great advice for young scientists just getting started.

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Jim Tanous is the founder of the TekRevue website. That’s where you’ll find a wealth of technical articles and reviews for Apple, PC and Linux products. He’s also a regular contributor and editor here at The Mac Observer. Jim was always interested in computer technology, even from age seven. There was no computer at home when he was growing up, but his elementary school had Apple IIs, and he learned the BASIC language. However, Jim’s father was an attorney, and Jim thought, all the way into his second year of law school, that he would become an attorney also. Then one day, he realized that he wasn’t enjoying himself. That, in turn led, by his account, to becoming an Apple Genius. Tune in to find out how he made that grand leap.

[Background Mode will return on July 10.]

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