Andy Ihnatko


Andy Ihnatko
is a tech author and former technology journalist for the Chicago Sun-Times,. He currently resides in Massachusetts. He is a co-host on the Material podcast, on Relay FM's network. He also appears on Leo Laporte's podcasts, specifically MacBreak Weekly and TWiT, and is a regular on the MacNotables podcast hosted by Chuck Joiner, where he often is paired with fellow technology journalist Adam Engst. In September 2011, he launched an ongoing podcast called The Ihnatko Almanac with Dan Benjamin on Benjamin's 5by5 Studios network.
Ihnatko has also appeared on the CBS Saturday Early Show on July 13, 2007, where he discussed applications for cell phones to imitate if not exceed the capabilities of the Apple iPhone. He appeared again on August 25, 2007, to report his conclusions after testing several urban legends about recovering mobile phones that had been submerged in water.
Ihnatko, for a brief time in July 2007, was believed to be the author of the satirical "The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs" weblog, until his formal denial on July 24 in an article for Macworld. He has also formally neither confirmed nor denied involvement in the Steve Jobs autobiography, which was rumoured on Valleywag.
Ihnatko's writing style is seasoned with references to US popular culture, P. G. Wodehouse, comic books, cartoons, and science fiction.
In the early days of the World Wide Web, Andy described a game called "Web That Smut". "Web That Smut" was loosely based on the television game show "Name That Tune". It involved predicting how many mouse clicks would be required to reach pornography from a given starting web page.
Also in the early days of the World Wide Web, it is believed that Ihnatko coined the term "Macquarium" to describe an aquarium made out of the empty shell of an early Macintosh computer. He wrote and distributed online the first comprehensive set of instructions to construct one.
On September 26, 2011, Andy joined podcast network 5by5 as co-host of a weekly show, The Ihnatko Almanac, with Dan Benjamin.
In July 2015, Ihnatko, along with Russell Ivanovic and Yasmine Evjen, started the Material podcast on the Relay FM network. The podcast discusses technology company Google and related topics, and takes its name from the design language of the same name developed by Google.