An Interview with David Pogue
by Jennifer Buckendorff
12/17/2002
After five minutes with David Pogue, it's clear that this is a man who
would make any computer class interesting. In each of his presentations,
he's likely to sing a little, crack jokes constantly, and yet still
teach you plenty about the subject by the time you're
done. This effervescent quality comes across in his books, and in this interview we
talk with him about how a theater geek who never studied computers became a best-selling tech book author.
Buckendorff: So, you were a music and theater guy. Are you still?
Pogue: Yes, I was a music major. I was a piano player and theater kid growing up in Cleveland, and spent 10 years on Broadway arranging, conducting, and playing synthesizers in theater pits. And until last year, I was still conducting summer stock, just to keep my toe in it. It's been a little crazy since The New York Times job started, but I think I'll try to make the time for that next year again. Someday, when I win the lottery, it would be fun to do full time. I mean, it doesn't produce much income, as any actor will tell you.
Buckendorff: Are you a Gershwin guy? Do you have a favorite musical?
Pogue: You know, I just love the sung word. I don't really have any favorites. I guess I'm kind of a Sondheim fan, and yeah, anything kind of interesting, kind of cool, gets me going. I loved The Mystery of Edwin Drood just because of the idea. And Pippin is one of my favorites just because it's a neat theatrical invention.
Buckendorff: And from there, you went on to work with celebrities and their Macs.
Pogue: That came out of the Broadway thing. I came very late to computers, so I'd never even touched one until senior year in college. And to this day, I believe that fact to be my ace in the hole. I'm one of them; I'm one of the newcomers.
Buckendorff: The unwashed!
Pogue: Exactly. I am not one of the insiders at all, so in everything I do, I try to bring that point of view. People still aren't really designing computers for people who are not computer people. And so that's what I try to explain in the books, and that's the point of view in the Times reviews, and so on.
Buckendorff: That fact comes across in your writing. There's a soothing, funny tone for people who might even be frustrated with computers.
Pogue: The shocking truth is I myself wrote computer books before I ever bought one in my life. I mean, I had taken books out at the library, but I had never actually bought one. Just as I've never bought a movie on DVD. How many times are you going to watch The Matrix? [laughs] If I was going to watch it more than once, I'd rent it and watch it twice.
Now I buy computer books when I need to learn about something. It's an unbelievably cost-effective way to learn. Classes drain your time, and they're not tailored to you. A personal trainer is tailored to you but very expensive, and a book isn't tailored to you, but at least you have the freedom to fast-forward through it.
The one great thing about having been a personal computer trainer is this philosophy I gained that's served me well: never teach anything before it's asked for. In the Missing Manuals, for example, I bend over backwards never to make Chapter One: "This is the interface. This is the toolbar. This is the..." whatever, because nobody's asked that question. It's far better to get to that toolbar when we're in the formatting chapter and you want to know how to make something bold.
It's not hard to be a master of the subject, but success is all about the presentation, and it's about how much fuss you make over a certain point. In the official documentation--if there is anything--for a program or an operating system, it's this even-handed discussion of every feature. But in truth, they are not all equally useful. As it turns out, in operating system companies like Apple and Microsoft, people sit around a table in a marketing department, and they decide what they should put in, and then they tell the engineers. So a classic example, in MacOSX 10.2 (Jaguar), Apple says there are 150 new features.
They talk about the new improvements to the mail program; they talk about new ways to search the Web. But nowhere, nowhere does it say that there's a new keystroke that will read out loud any text in any program, that you no longer have to go to your Web site in the morning to read the morning news or the latest Mac news. Instead, you can hit a keystroke, close your eyes, lean back in the chair, and have it read to you, just like blind people do every day of their lives. You can even have it converted into an MP3 file of a voice reading it, and dump it onto your MP3 player or iPod. For me, that's a big feature, but it is not only not in the Online Help, it isn't even in the marketing materials for MacOSX 10.2.
So for me, I make a big deal of this in the book, because I think it's a phenomenal way to shift time: to read stuff when you don't feel like reading. Also, let me show you something. What does this sign say? [He holds up drawing of a triangular sign with writing in it.]
Buckendorff: "King of the road." No, "King of the the road"!
Pogue: "King of the the road." And about one person in 50 catches that on the first reading, and that's the problem with proofreading. Your eyes won't do it. But if it is read to you, you would catch the error. And so there are a million reasons why it's nice to listen to stuff sometimes instead of reading it with your eyes. And it's all completely undocumented. So again, the marketing people and I have different takes on what's important to document.
Buckendorff: How do you explain that chasm, then, between what readers find is interesting to learn about, and what the companies choose to document?
Pogue: Well, Apple is a classic case. Apple is an ivory tower. Apple is an enclave in Cupertino who doesn't believe in focus groups and doesn't believe in studies. They believe in what Steve Jobs thinks is good for the people. It often is, but they don't do any kind of studying. Microsoft does all kinds of unit testing, in scads. I just got an email from one of the guys who went in to do one of their focus groups, and he said, "They asked all the wrong questions! I was dying to tell them what was wrong with their thing, but that wasn't the question that they asked."
For another example, if you want to add an appointment to your address book, on the Palm you can just write it onto the line that says "1:00." You write, "Lunch with Bob." In the Microsoft pocket PC operating system, you tap the line, you tap a new button, a dialog box opens up, you write in the name of the appointment, choose an ending time, and then click "Okay." So it's five taps instead of zero. No one would ever ask for that if they had a choice between five taps and just writing it in on the 1:00 line. Nobody. So clearly, they are not asking the right questions.
So the reason I think that often I know better is that I'm a real world person and they're not. They live and breathe this stuff.
Buckendorff: So how do you get distance from it?
Pogue: Actually, I just have to make a point of it. Yes, I'm in the business now, and, to an extent, that's a drawback. Except that I spend my time trolling emails, visiting Web sites and reading the forums of what people pose as questions.
Check back next week for part two of this interview, where David discusses being both an editor and a writer and how he can get the Missing Manuals to market so quickly.
Jennifer Buckendorff
is a freelance writer and editor living in Seattle, Washington.
