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In the New York Times, Sam Roberts shares the sad news<\/a>:<\/p>\n David Lerner, a high school dropout and self-taught computer geek whose funky foothold in New York\u2019s Flatiron district, Tekserve, was for decades a beloved discount mecca for Apple customers desperate to retrieve lost data and repair frozen hard drives, died on Nov. 12 at a hospital in Manhattan. He was 72.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n I wasn\u2019t close to David, but our orbits intersected on a number of occasions. Long ago, I gave a presentation at Tekserve in Manhattan, which our friends Sharon Zardetto Aker and Rich Wolfson used as an excuse to come into the city; Rich remembers playing pinball with our son Tristan during the talk. David was also a regular on TidBITS Talk as far back as 2009, and both he and Tekserve appeared in TidBITS a handful of times.<\/p>\n In 2000, I lauded the 25-page booklet Tekserve was giving out at Macworld Expo as the Most Valuable Free Handout (see \u201cMacworld Expo 2000 NY Other Superlatives<\/a>,\u201d 31 July 2000)\u2014in retrospect, I suspect that booklet may well have been Sharon\u2019s work, since she did some writing for Tekserve over the years. When Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard shipped, we published an article about how Tekserve was donating to the Snow Leopard Trust\u2019s fundraising program to help endangered snow leopards (see \u201cProtecting Snow Leopard\u2019s Namesake Cats<\/a>,\u201d 16 September 2009). But Tekserve had to compete with multiple Apple Stores in Manhattan and was eventually forced to close its famed retail operation (see \u201cMacNN and Tekserve Close, EveryMac and Mactracker Carry On<\/a>,\u201d 8 July 2016). A year later, we reported that \u201cMacPaw Bought the Tekserve Apple Collection<\/a>\u201d (11 May 2017), which included a 128K Mac signed by Steve Wozniak. Let\u2019s hope it\u2019s still safe in Kyiv.<\/p>\n But perhaps David\u2019s most interesting, albeit fictional, appearance in TidBITS came in my short-lived but fun foray into writing tech analysis in noir style. In \u201cThe Mystery of the Leopard Ship Date: Solved<\/a>\u201d (16 April 2007), I quoted him as saying:<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m personally disappointed, because I was looking forward to Time Machine.\u201d This wasn\u2019t surprising from a man who signs his email, \u2018May You have 1000 Backups and Never Need One.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n I can\u2019t remember how I got the quote, but that really was his email signature, and David did care deeply about backups. That\u2019s what made the Sex and the City<\/em> scene<\/a> where Carrie Bradshaw has to take her PowerBook to Tekserve so grating\u2014she admits she doesn\u2019t back up her work and had gotten rid of the manual \u201cin a feng shui attack.\u201d In 2001, that wasn\u2019t charming or quirky for a professional writer; it was avoidable negligence presented as a TV trope of helplessness about technology.<\/p>\n\n
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