About Lex
Writer, developer, podcast guy, improviser. In roughly that order, depending on the day.
Hi. I’m Lex Friedman, and this is where I write about technology — mostly Apple, increasingly AI, and always the software we actually live inside all day.
I’ve been doing some version of this for a long time. I was a staff writer and then senior writer at Macworld, covering hardware and software reviews, how-tos, news, and opinion for what was then the largest Apple publication in the world. Before that I wrote news and reviews for TidBITS. Along the way I’ve written four books, including The Snuggie Sutra and The Kid in the Crib, and I spent a stretch as a director at Cracked.com, where I created and hosted a weekly comedy web series.
The business half of the résumé
Between the writing, I’ve had a career in startups and podcasting. I co-founded The Daily Plate, a diet-tracking site that grew to a million users in its first year and was acquired by Demand Media in 2008. I started a podcast ad business called Podlexing, which was acquired by Midroll in 2013 — where I came on as a co-founder and served as Chief Revenue Officer and later Chief Business Development Officer, signing shows from Conan O’Brien, Bill Simmons, and Marc Maron, before Midroll was acquired by E.W. Scripps in 2015.
In 2019 I joined podcast technology company ART19 as Chief Revenue Officer. ART19 was acquired by Amazon in 2021, and I stayed on as Head of Podcast Strategy for Wondery. Since 2023 I’ve run Lex Friedman Consulting, helping companies grow revenue, coach their teams, and occasionally get acquired themselves.
Five acquisitions and one IPO, if you’re counting. I mention it here only because it explains why my read on a tech company’s announcement is usually as much about the business model as the product.
The things I make
I build software, too. There’s Lex.Games, my daily puzzle site; Gnome, a Mac utility; Tile & Error, a word game; plus Cryptograms, LexShell, Gimme A Second, Camera Ready, and a few others. The full shelf is at lexfriedman.com/apps.
I co-host The Rebound, a weekly tech podcast, with Dan Moren and John Moltz. I write a newsletter about business advice and life strategy called Your Intermittent Lex. And I perform and teach improv — including corporate improv workshops for teams that need to listen to each other better.
The personal footnotes
I grew up in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, where I am at best the third-most-famous former resident. I learned to program on a Commodore 64 that booted into BASIC if you forgot the floppy, then a Kaypro, then an Apple IIc. I met my first Mac at summer camp and never really recovered. I live in New Jersey, I’m a dad to three and a husband to one, and I still think the best thing about a new gadget is the first ten minutes with it.
Getting in touch
Corrections, tips, disagreements, and app recommendations are all welcome — use the contact form. You can also find me on Mastodon, Bluesky, and Threads.
Everything else I do lives at lexfriedman.com.