John Gruber (born 1973) is a technology blogger, UI designer, and co-creator of the

Markdown Markdown is a lightweight markup language for creating formatted text using a plain-text editor. John Gruber created Markdown in 2004 as an easy-to-read markup language. Markdown is widely used for blogging and instant messaging, and also used ...

markup language. Gruber authors the

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

enthusiast blog Daring Fireball and produces its accompanying podcast, ''The Talk Show''.

History

Gruber is from

Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...

. He received his

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, B.S., B.Sc., SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree that is awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Scienc ...

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

from

Drexel University Drexel University is a private university, private research university with its main campus in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Drexel's undergraduate school was founded in 1891 by Anthony Joseph Drexel, Anthony J. Drexel, a financier ...

, and worked for

Bare Bones Software Bare Bones Software is a private North Chelmsford, Massachusetts, United States software company developing software tools for the Mac (computer), Apple Macintosh platform. The company develops the BBEdit text editor, marketed under the registered ...

(2000–02) and

Joyent Joyent Inc. is a software and services company based in San Francisco, California. Specializing in cloud computing, it markets infrastructure-as-a-service. On June 15, 2016, the company was acquired by Samsung Electronics. Services Triton, Joyen ...

(2005–06). In 2004,

Aaron Swartz Aaron Hillel Swartz (; November 8, 1986January 11, 2013), also known as AaronSw, was an American computer programmer, entrepreneur, writer, political organizer, and Internet hacktivism, hacktivist. As a programmer, Swartz helped develop the we ...

and Gruber worked together to create the

language, with the goal of enabling people "to write using an easy-to-read and easy-to-write plain text format, optionally convert it to structurally valid

XHTML Extensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML) is part of the family of XML markup languages which mirrors or extends versions of the widely used HyperText Markup Language (HTML), the language in which Web pages are formulated. While HTML, pr ...

(or

HTML Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It defines the content and structure of web content. It is often assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets ( ...

)".Markdown 1.0.1 readme source code

Media

Daring Fireball

Since 2002, Gruber has written and produced Daring Fireball, a technology-focused weblog. He has described his Daring Fireball writing as a " Mac column in the form of a weblog". The site is written in the form of a tumblelog called ''The Linked List'', a

linklog A linklog is a type of blog which is meant to act as a linked list. Common practice is for the post titles to link directly to an external URLs, and the content of the post includes information to complement the associated URL. Linklogs existed ...

with brief commentary, in between occasional longform articles that discuss

products and issues in related consumer technology. Gruber often writes about user interfaces,

software development Software development is the process of designing and Implementation, implementing a software solution to Computer user satisfaction, satisfy a User (computing), user. The process is more encompassing than Computer programming, programming, wri ...

, Mac applications, and Apple's media coverage. On Daring Fireball, Gruber tends to cover Apple in a positive manner and defend Apple against criticism. Media outlets have described Gruber as an Apple "

fanboy A fan or fanatic, sometimes also termed an aficionado or enthusiast, is a person who exhibits strong interest or admiration for something or somebody, such as a celebrity, a sport, a sports team, a genre, a politician, a book, a movie, a video ...

" in conjunction with his writing on the website; Gruber responded in a 2011 interview that although he does not use the term ''fanboy'', he supports Apple because he appreciates the company.

''The Talk Show''

''The Talk Show'' is a technology

podcast A podcast is a Radio program, program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. Typically, a podcast is an Episode, episodic series of digital audio Computer file, files that users can download to a personal device or str ...

started by Gruber intended as a " director's commentary" to Daring Fireball. Guests are usually programmers, designers, analysts and journalists. In June 2007, Gruber and Dan Benjamin began co-hosting an independent podcast featuring conversations and commentary on trends, mainly focusing on technology at thetalkshow.net. This format persisted but the show "started over" and helped establish Benjamin's 5by5 Studios network. The show ran from July 2010 until May 2012 for a total of 90 episodes. Gruber moved the show to the Mule Radio Syndicate network in May 2012. This time, Gruber changed the format and became the sole host of the show with alternating guests each episode. The show ran for 80 episodes and in May 2014, ''The Talk Show'' parted ways with Mule Radio and became part of Daring Fireball. The show continues to use the episode number scheme and logo started at Mule Radio. Apple Inc.

senior vice president A vice president or vice-president, also director in British English, is an officer in government or business who is below the president (chief executive officer) in rank. It can also refer to executive vice presidents, signifying that the vice ...

(SVP) of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller appeared as a guest on the live episode of ''The Talk Show'' during WWDC 2015 in San Francisco. Apple SVPs

Eddy Cue Eduardo H. Cue (born October 23, 1964) is Apple Inc., Apple's senior vice president of Services, reporting to CEO Tim Cook. Cue oversees Apple's numerous content stores and products including the iTunes Store, the Apple Books Store, and Apple ...

and

Craig Federighi Craig Federighi (born May 27, 1969) is an Apple engineer and business executive who is the senior vice president (SVP) of software engineering at Apple Inc. He oversees the development of Apple's operating systems. His teams are responsible for ...

appeared as guests on a recorded episode published February 12, 2016. Phil Schiller and Craig Federighi also appeared on the live episodes of ''The Talk Show'' during WWDC 2016 and 2017.

Other works

In early 2013, Gruber, Brent Simmons, and Dave Wiskus founded software development firm Q Branch to develop the Vesper notes app for

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

. The venture was not successful, and Q Branch has since shut down. In March 2020, Gruber started a new podcast with friend and colleague Ben Thompson called ''Dithering''. Each episode is exactly 15 minutes long and access to the show is granted via subscription.

References

External links

Daring Fireball
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gruber, John 1973 births American male bloggers American bloggers American technology writers Drexel University alumni Living people Place of birth missing (living people) American technology podcasters 21st-century American non-fiction writers