{"id":51493,"date":"2026-04-07T18:53:20","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T22:53:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=51493"},"modified":"2026-04-16T11:09:42","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T15:09:42","slug":"john-martellaro-rip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/07\/john-martellaro-rip\/","title":{"rendered":"John Martellaro, RIP"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bryan Chaffin<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

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<\/em>. He wrote SciFi and a variety of tech columns for several other Mac sites, too.<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Jeff Gamet<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

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.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

He wrote for many Mac publications. Just his author page at TMO<\/em><\/a> has 83 pages of article summaries.<\/p>\n\n

Update (2026-04-14<\/a>): John Gruber<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Another one worth revisiting is this post from December 2011<\/a>, where I linked to a Martellaro column<\/a> 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Many of the Martellaro articles that I linked to over the years are also no longer available outside the Internet Archive.<\/p>\n\n

Update (2026-04-16<\/a>): Adam Engst<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

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<\/a>,” 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.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bryan Chaffin: 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2026-04-07T22:53:24Z","apple_news_api_id":"5a9abdf5-7b53-4283-9269-bd490d2fa999","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2026-04-16T15:09:45Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAQ==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AWpq99XtTQoOSab1JDS-pmQ","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[406,1127,30,208,994],"class_list":["post-51493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-appleii","tag-internet-archive","tag-mac","tag-rip","tag-media"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51493"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51493\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51603,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51493\/revisions\/51603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}