As Brent Hecht reported here yesterday, one of the pioneers and deans of Macintosh journalism passed away on Saturday, February 26 at age 44.

Don Crabb had been hospitalized after collapsing suddenly on December 3, and had been battling septic shock and pancreatitis.

Mr. Crabb's professional credits are too extensive to list exhaustively here, but in brief he was the Associate Director of Graduate and Undergraduate Studies in Computer Science, Departmental Counselor, Director of Instructional Laboratories, and a Senior Lecturer at The University of Chicago, where he had taught undergraduate, graduate, and professional computing and computer science courses since 1979. Don was also a certified instructional software developer for Microsoft, IBM, SGI, Apple, and Sun. Trained as an historian as well as a computer scientist, Don specialized in enpowering humanities and liberal arts students with a critical understanding of computer science, computer programming and digital technologies.

Don was best-known to the Macintosh comunity as Chicago Sun-Times Computer Columnist and a technology writer. His column "Crabb on Computers," was syndicated by the Chicago Sun-Times Features Syndicate into 253 newspapers. He was also a columnist for MacWEEK, a Contributing Editor for MacToday magazine, and the Executive Director of the Apple and Exocuds Communications Customer Advisory Boards, as well as publishing his own Website, where a his complete curriculum vitae is posted.

Don was also a contributing editor, columnist, and consulting editor for BYTE, Senior Editor for Digital Chicago, and a contributing editor and review board member for InfoWorld . Among other publication he contributed to were Corporate Computing magazine. MacWorld, PC World, PC Resource, Windows Magazine, MicroCAD News, MacUSER, ComputerWorld, The New York Times, UniSIG News, Digital Review, UnixWorld, The Chicago Tribune, The Macintosh Business Review, and Chicago Computing. He had written over 4,000 articles and columns for magazines and newspapers since 1979.

Mr Crabb edited and developed numerous textbooks and computer books for several publishers. He was the senior consulting editor for books published by Hayden Books, and the series editor of The Don Crabb Macintosh Library. The Word Book by Tanya Engst, Mastering NetScape by Greg Holden, The Excel Book by Charles Seiter, The PowerPC Starter Kit by Tom Thompson The PowerMac Programming Starter Kit and The PowerPC Programming Kit by Tom Thompson, QuickTime: The Official Guide for Macintosh Users by Judith L. Stern and Robert A. Lettieri, Publishing on the World Wide Web by Greg Holden, Tricks of the Macintosh Game Programming Gurus, The Macintosh Programming Starter Kit by Jim Trudeau, MacWEEK Upgrading and Repairing Your Mac by Lisa Lee, and The WebServer Construction Kit ,among other titles, were published in The Don Crabb Macintosh Library. Don was also an editor and contributing writer of the sixth and seventh editions of PeachPit Press's Macintosh Bible.

Don was also the computer and Internet correspondent for Fox Thing in the Morning on WFLD Fox 32 TV and separately on the Fox News Channel, and the coproducer, cohost, and technical editor of the weekly syndicated cable MacTV show. He was a frequent guest co-host of PCTV, a syndicated cable weekly TV show dealing with all kinds of computing topics, and had appeared as a technology analyst on a number of local and national television news programs over the past fifteen years, including Chicago Tonight, The Aaron Freeman Show, The Jim Lehrer News Hour, The Today Show, Fox-32 Morning News, NBC Nightly News, The Larry King Show, CNN Headline News, CNN Evening News Hour, CBS Evening News, Channel 2 News, Channel 5 News, Channel 7 News, and others.

Don had a radio show, wgnradio.com, heard on WGN - AM 720, and via RealAudio at www.wgnradio.com, .and appeared weekly on the Steve and Johnnie Show on WGN - AM 720, was the featured computer and technology commentator on the Bob Collins and Spike O'Dell shows, and on WGN. He made regular appearances on the Odyssey program on National Public Radio, and on many other radio shows.

Don Crabb was born March 25, 1955, in Chillicothe, Ohio. He is survived by his parents, Marilyn and Donald Eugene Crabb, of Cincinnati; and a sister, Diane McHenry.

Don Crabb's obituary in the Chicago Sun-Times is written by eminent film critic Roger Ebert, and may be read here: http://www.suntimes.com/output/obituaries/xcrabb.html

Charles W. Moore

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February 09, 2010