David Pogue is a famous author of science and technology books, a contributor to CBS Sunday Morning and a one time Broadway pit band leader.

I am none of those things.

Well, I have led non-Broadway pit bands a couple of times, and I have read a lot of science and technology books, and Cathy and I always watch CBS Sunday Morning because we are now in that coveted Old People Who Drug Companies Make Commercials For demographic.

Imagine my delight, then, that not once but TWICE I have co-authored books with David Pogue. Although my name is not exactly on their covers, it’s in them.

The World According to Twitter

In 2009, as Twitter was capturing the world’s consciousness and attracting clever, intelligent people in a way that it totally DOESN’T do now, Pogue wrote The World According to Twitter

in which he posted some questions on Twitter to his 500,000 followers, collected the best responses, and published a book in which he actually listed everybody as a co-author.

Somehow, a few of mine made the cut!

He –very kindly– wrote:

As you'll soon see, this book's coauthors are some of the wittiest, sharpest, most interesting people on the internet.

gosh.

These were actual tweets posed by @Pogue and answered by @shayman and no, I’m not linking to the originals on Twitter, I’m avoiding it. But back in 2009, I loved Twitter. I remain very sad about what’s happened to it since, (find me now on mastodon ) but back in the day …

What’s your brilliant idea to improve air travel?

Your frequent flyer card can be used to lock the seat in front of you in the full upright position.

Who's had a brush with greatness?
Met Bobby Orr at age 11. He handed me an apple core and said "Here, kid, would you throw this away for me?" I should've had it bronzed.

Make up a headline from the year 2012.
Twitter's Multibillion-Dollar Server Upgrade Complete; Messages Can Now Be 142 Characters

Pretty much everything else in the book is funnier than this but hey, it was 2009, we were doing our best. And here’s proof I’m a co-author.

Apple: The First 50 Years

Apple turns 50 on Wednesday this week. David Pogue has written what is probably THE definitive history of the company, and if not, it’s certainly full of plenty of anecdotes that I’ve never heard before. I spent 33 years working at Apple (and NeXT) so of course I had to buy this one, and it will fit in nicely with the 4,000 other books about Apple I already have.

It’s a great book, I am very much enjoying it. And it’s a New York Times bestseller!

So here’s my tenuous contribution to Apple: The First 50 Years.

Last October, Pogue asked for volunteers who might know a thing or two to proofread certain chapters, even though the book was basically done at that point.

There’s a chapter about NeXT, so of course I volunteered, and he emailed me a preview of chapter 26.

I sent back a few notes – tremendously big deals such as the fact that he’d spelled the famous oceanographer as Jacques Yves-Cousteau when of course it’s Jacques-Yves Cousteau, and a couple of actual factual corrections to the NeXT timeline.

He graciously thanked me – and dozens of other fact-checkers – and we’re all acknowledged in the book itself. I’m honoured to be listed on page 568 as a Beta Reader in this, the definitive book about Apple.

Is that as cool as having my name on every iPhone in the world?

Almost!

one final tenuous connection to David Pogue - MacHack/AdHoc 2004

MacHack (later renamed AdHoc) was a legendary Mac conference in Michigan where the keynote speeches started at midnight and continued for hours, and the brilliant attendees would stay up all night trying to out-do each other with clever MacHacks.

In 2004, a speaker from Apple in California had to pull out at the last minute when he got ill, and I was asked on a couple of days notice to fill in, and was an ideal replacement because of the following reasons:

a) I lived near enough to Dearborn, Michigan to drive there.

I asked the organizers how long these keynotes were supposed to go. I mean, starting at midnight? Really? And they told me “Well, if you go past about six AM, you’ll probably start to lose people.”

So I did my best and was the keynote speaker for the 2nd night of the conference, showing off some Applescript tricks, making the CD/DVD trays on multiple PowerMacs pop in and out in sync, getting the computers to sing the list of software updates (softwareupdate --list | say -v Cellos) , and more late-night silliness.

My Day 2 Keynote went over pretty well. (I think I wrapped up at about 2 AM, with apologies for giving such a short talk.)

David Pogue was the Day 1 keynote, and I regret I didn’t have a chance to say hello.

The reviews were pretty good for both of us. Here’s a note from Adam Engst of TidBits:

Keynote. MacHack keynotes are legendary events that start at midnight and continue for hours, with well known speakers such as Ted Nelson, John Warnock, Steve Wozniak, Andy Ihnatko, and numerous others. This year’s lead-off keynote at ADHOC was ably given by David Pogue, who initially seemed a little shocked by the extreme level of interactivity traditionally shown by the audience. But David rolled with it, and quickly drew everyone in with his witty song parodies and jokes. His Panther tips were a challenge to members of the audience, which tried (successfully on a number of occasions) to tell David things he didn’t know. The second night’s keynote (also at midnight) was delivered by Apple’s Steve Hayman, substituting for an ill Jordan Hubbard. Steve drew on his experience with Apple’s large education installations (the places that have thousands of iBooks in school systems) and years of working with Unix to give a talk that was both hilarious and useful, in that he showed how simple it was to use development tools like AppleScript Studio to marry a graphical interface and a command line utility. +2 points.

Ted Nelson, John Warnock, Steve Wozniak, Andy Ihnatko, David Pogue, and me.

I’m a lucky guy.