David Pogue, Tech Reviewer at Yahoo! Finance
Today, my guest is David Pogue, who is the tech critic for Yahoo! Finance after having spent 13 years as the personal-technology columnist for the New York Times. He’s also a monthly columnist for Scientific American and host of science shows on PBS’s NOVA and has been a correspondent for CBS Sunday Morning since 2002. With over 3 million books in print, David is also one of the world’s bestselling authors of for Dummies series. In 1999, he launched his own series of complete, funny computer books called the Missing Manual series, which now includes 120 titles.
David graduated summa cum laude from Yale in 1985, with distinction in music, and he spent 10 years conducting and arranging Broadway musicals in New York. He’s won 4 Emmy awards, 2 Webby awards, a Loeb award for journalism, and an honorary doctorate in music.
He’s been profiled on 48 Hours and 60 Minutes. It was a thrill to have him as my guest just after he returned from the tenth anniversary announcement of Apple's iPhone X at the Steve Jobs Theatre in Cupertino.
In this candid conversation, David shared the real stories behind his transition from Broadway to tech journalism, his unique approach to explaining gadgets, and how he broke his family's long lineage of lawyers.
1. The Magic of Technology. David revealed that his deep attraction to technology actually stems from a childhood love of magic and television shows like Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie. Seeing himself as a journalist and an "explainer" rather than a hardcore coder, he views modern devices—like using a phone to change a thermostat from afar—as the closest things we have to actual magic. When reviewing products, he specifically avoids obnoxious techno-jargon and always tries to add a human touch, humor, and entertainment to his work.
2. A Musical Pivot. After college, David's original ambition was to be a Broadway composer, and he spent ten years writing musicals and conducting in orchestra pits. His career unexpectedly pivoted when he discovered "Finale," a software program that magically turned his electric keyboard playing into sheet music in real-time. He became the resident expert on the software in New York, wrote the program's manuals, and slowly found his tech-explaining skills to be in higher demand than his composing.
3. Breaking the Legal Lineage. Coming from a family where his father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and siblings were all lawyers, David was the definitive "black sheep". Horrified after learning his father was defending a tobacco company, David announced he was going to Broadway instead of law school. His father gave him a strict two-year deadline to get theater out of his system; incredibly, a show David had been working on opened on Broadway in the 24th month, saving him from a traditional legal career and making his father incredibly proud.
4. The Evolution of Apple. Having just returned from the iPhone 10 announcement, David marveled at the stunning, marble-and-glass Steve Jobs Theater, but noted a shift in the tech giant's culture. He observed that without Steve Jobs as the primary "idea man," Apple's products are less category-changing than they used to be. Furthermore, due to massive factory leaks out of China, the highly rehearsed events rarely hold any actual surprises anymore, though David still considers getting paid to play with new electronics his absolute "idea of heaven".
