About

Here’s a story about a man named Dan.

The year was 1996 and Dan was just coming off a stint as a part-time writer/webmaster for Intelligent Gamer1, the web’s first video game magazine. His love of Apple and the Mac got him thinking of creating a niche site that focused on a initiative that Apple was pushing heavily — OpenDoc.

Out of this came a site called The Cyberdog Pound that focused on OpenDoc and Cyberdog, a collection of Internet tools that used the OpenDoc framework. OpenDoc was an interesting technology and provided a steady stream of things to write about, but like a lot of things Apple did at the time, it was half-baked, buggy, bloated and didn’t get developers excited. Then Steve Jobs put a bullet in its head.

With that, the Pound became pointless. Dan needed a larger subject to write about and saw an opportunity that wasn’t being exploited by a lot of the Mac news sites of that era.

This is when Webintosh was introduced. Instead of posting press releases verbatim, Webintosh aimed to offer more of a thoughtful spin on Apple and Mac news. There was news, of course, but there were also product reviews and op-ed pieces. The site was a success and opened Dan’s eyes to the business world. Like a lot of 19-year olds, Dan did some things right, some things wrong, but he learned a lot.

When a fork in the road presented itself, Dan had a decision to make — invest in Webintosh for the long-term and continue to grow it, or find a pair of suitable hands to takeover. Dan chose the later and Webintosh soon became the Mac Observer, a site that still lives on, some 12 years after it’s original roots were planted.

Over the course of those dozen years, Dan transitioned into the advertising world and honed his skills at some of the most prominent agencies in the country, including Digitas and Razorfish. His latest endeavor has him focusing on establishing and growing the Philadelphia presence of Neiman Group, a 30-year old agency that is going through a rebirth of sorts.

A lot has changed since 1996, both for Dan personally, professionally and certainly for Apple. But one thing that hasn’t is Dan’s profound interest in the company and its products and his need to write.

I’m Dan Hughes and this is Talking Apple.

1Interestingly enough, Jeremy Horowitz, founder of Intelligent Gamer, went onto a career writing about Apple as well. He’s the editor-in-chief of iLounge.com.