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Most Influential People In Technical Mac Community

An anonymous reader writes "The MacTech Journal of Macintosh Technology has released MacTech 25, a list of top 25 most influential people in the *Technical* Mac community. According to the magazine 'The MacTech 25 is designed to recognize the technical contributions of developers writers, bloggers, problem-solvers and personalities to the Macintosh technical community.' The people were chosen by popular voting during June. Bios and pictures of the people on the list will be published in the printed MacTech magazine in time for WWDC."

18 of 64 comments (clear)

  1. Kottke? by Ohreally_factor · · Score: 3, Funny

    I can't believe they left out Jason Kottke! I think the voting was rigged!

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    It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
    1. Re:Kottke? by Whiney+Mac+Fanboy · · Score: 4, Funny

      I can't believe they left out me! :-)

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      There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
  2. What a great list! by MBCook · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's all text, all names, and no links. Who ARE those people? I have no idea! I wanted to find out, but it looks like I'd have to Google each and every name.

    Have you ever noticed that when Forbes or someone makes a list like this, they at LEAST give each person a few words to describe who they work for or some such?

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    1. Re:What a great list! by Ohreally_factor · · Score: 2, Insightful

      =)

      I actually chuckled out loud.

      It's funny, though, that a large amount of the people on that lists are pundits, opinionators, journalists, popularizers, evangleists and the like, not really what I think of as tech people, like you and a few others. Why isn't Rael Dornfest on the list? There's not enough people that actually program there. David Pogue is technical? Because he writes/edits the Missing Manuals?

      --
      It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
  3. Re:Tim Monroe by Ohreally_factor · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I think that must be the same deal for Mike Bombich, who wrote some very nifty software (as donationware) before he was hired by Apple. I used to hang out on a forum where he and his wife frequented, and he was always helpful and friendly to others. Nice guy as well as a great mac geek. I remember how excited they were when Mike got hired by Apple. It was a dream come true. Hell, I think the entire forum was tickled that one of our own was going to join the mother ship.

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    It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
  4. Where's Dvorvak? by TheBogie · · Score: 3, Funny

    Why didn't Dvorvack make the list?

    1. Re:Where's Dvorvak? by jcr · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Why didn't Dvorvack make the list?

      Because trolling doesn't count as "influence".

      -jcr

      --
      The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
  5. Apple has impact on Microsoft? by SuperKendall · · Score: 2, Insightful

    One only has to look at Vista to realize how much is flowing from Apple to Microsoft, not the other way around.

    There are very few features Microsoft implements and Apple duplicates. So in what way in Bill influential on what Apple does? Apple seems to be well ahead of Microsoft at this point from a strategic OS and application perspective.

    The only recent thing I could see Apple possibly adopting ome variant off is application ribbons from the new Office.

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    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  6. Re:Where's Bill? by tb3 · · Score: 2, Funny

    This is the technical list. Bill is on the other list.
    (Which just makes sense; Gates would even know how to open a Mac.)

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    www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance

  7. No Leo? by seven5 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I was surprised that Leo Laporte wasn't on this list. He's done wonders over the years in knocking out the Mac myths that became irrelevant with Os X. His voice travels far and is broadcast wide as well.

  8. A less crappy list. by oneiros27 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here's what I know of and/or could find for the ones I didn't.

    Unfortunately, it seems that Slashdot has a limitation on the minimum number of characters per line. So I can't just create a nice, simple list, but instead need a significant amount of text to pad out the list, so that I can make it past the filters being used. But I'm still not there yet... sooner or later I will (20.4 is still too few). I'm probably going to have to type a whole lot of crap in here just to deal with the 25 names that are only a few characters each. (and I tried removing returns from the message, but it didn't seem to help at all)

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    Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
    1. Re:A less crappy list. by Fahrenheit+450 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Ben Wilson is an editor at MacFixIt
      Mike Breeden is from Accelerate Your Mac. He might run it, but I'm not sure.
      All I really know about Nigel Kersten is that he wrote SirAdmin.

      Meh. Not a sterling list...

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      -30-
  9. Leo & Qdial by cmholm · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Yeah, since the list was a bit heavy with writers, you'd think he'd rate. His Qdial desk accessory was one of my favorate bits of code back in the mid-80's, when I was constantly dialing up BBS'. Its innovation was to flog the modem during a Mac's vertical blanking interval (screen refresh, when whatever application you were using and the OS were otherwise twiddling their thumbs), which allowed me to keep working while I waited to connect to a busy board. This was before the Multifinder, and my first practical taste of multitasking, outside of a VAX/VMS system.

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  10. Don't be fooled by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    About half the people on this list write for the magazine that published the list.

    Here's how this works:
    (1) Magazine publishes list of "influencial" people.
    (2) Magazine includes their regular contributors on the list.
    (3) Magazine begins referring to their contributors as "highly influencial members of the Mac community."
    (4) Magazine hopes we all fall for it.

    This is no different than George W. Bush calling his house in Texas a "ranch" in hopes that everyone else will call it a ranch.

    It has no lifestock and (originally had) no horses, yet all the press called it a ranch because that's what they were told. Six years later, his house is a ranch.

  11. A miserable failure, the only possible outcome. by mactari · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The MacTech 25 is no popularity contest, nor
    is it to "pick your favorite CEO." We looked for the most influential in
    the Mac TECHNICAL market.


    This seems simliar to American Idol saying that this year, they've instructed the caller-in voters to pick purely on ability. How else could David Pogue and Mike Breeden -- admittedly both *very* influencial writers and news reporters in the Mac "space" -- out-garner Glenda Adams (of Aspyr.com fame, formerly president of Westlake Interactive), who seems, at times, to single-handedly not only keep Mac gamers with options, but also keep anyone interested in the Mac as a gaming platform?

    Even then I'm just picking from my own favorites. What techs have these people championed? What BurgerLibs have they created or OpenGLs have they supported?

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    It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
    1. Re:A miserable failure, the only possible outcome. by tonywong · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Mike Breeden was one of the guys who kept the high end overclocking and modding community alive when Macs were on life support in the mid to late nineties. He's always been a one man show and while you guys may not think he's very influential right now, he's pretty much one degree removed from all the important people today.

      Ever since the G5 has stumped the modding community xlr8yourmac has kind have just been a reporting news site, but perhaps the future x86 Macs might bring back Mike's site to it's former glory.

  12. I thought they were all switching to Ubuntu? by aurelian · · Score: 2, Funny

    Or was that last week?

  13. Re:"Infuential"? by wjsdelicious · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Geez JCR... you can't think of ANY example of ANY of us exerting influence on developers?

    Rude.