John Martellaro, RIP
He rose to the rank of Captain in the U.S. Air Force, and he was a NASA scientist. He worked for years at Apple, and most importantly to me, he was a columnist and the voice of reason and humanity at The Mac Observer. He wrote SciFi and a variety of tech columns for several other Mac sites, too.
John was kind, smart, logical, and always reasonable. He was both considerate and considered. Every word that came out of his mouth had a reason to be there and a place to go.
He’s the guy behind the space shuttle landing simulator I played on an Apple II. He also wrote fantastic analysis pieces and interviewed wonderfully interesting people for his podcast back when we worked together at The Mac Observer.
He wrote for many Mac publications. Just his author page at TMO has 83 pages of article summaries.
Update (2026-04-14): John Gruber:
One of Martellaro’s columns I most remember was one I linked to in January 2010, “How Apple Does Controlled Leaks”[…] Inexplicably, the original piece is no longer hosted at The Mac Observer, but thankfully the Internet Archive has it.
[…]
Another one worth revisiting is this post from December 2011, where I linked to a Martellaro column in which he declared that the success of the Amazon Kindle Fire necessitated that Apple build a 7-inch iPad. “Noted for future claim chowder,” I wrote. Well, Apple debuted the iPad Mini in October 2012.
Many of the Martellaro articles that I linked to over the years are also no longer available outside the Internet Archive.
Update (2026-04-16): Adam Engst:
It has been a tough few weeks for Mac writers. On 26 March 2026, John Martellaro died, followed by Chuck La Tournous on 3 April 2026. I didn’t know either one well, although John wrote what he subsequently told me was his first-ever industry piece for TidBITS back in 1996 (see “Dream to be Different,” 9 September 1996). It captures some of the idealism of Apple’s early days while bemoaning how Apple had lost its way, trading inspiration and wonder for price-cutting. It’s a reminder of how we have long built up Apple as a paragon of virtue, only to be disappointed when the company acts like, well, a company.
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Space shuttle simulator? That wouldn't happen to be "Rendezvous"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendezvous:_A_Space_Shuttle_Simulation
Sad news. John was a such a nice guy. He wrote many articles for a little scrappy Mac website that I created and ran ~25 years ago. Always gracious and kind. Now after doing some googling to reminisce, I see that Charles W. Moore passed away in 2018. He was one of my writers too. Great memories.
