David Schultz, creator of the AppleLust Web site, died in October of 2008. For various reasons, those Mac writers who knew him best seemed to have lost touch with him, and the news of his death will come as a surprise to many. So while writing a few words about David six months after his death may seem too late to make a worthwhile obituary, David's influence on the Mac world was significant enough that his passing deserves mention.

David Schultz was both a Macintosh evangelist and an old-school academic, a professor of philosophy no less. His writing was always erudite, and even those who wouldn't agree with him had to admit his arguments were intelligent and consistently relevant. He loved the Macintosh even when it wasn't fashionable to do so, during those grim years of the 1990s when the media barely ever mentioned Apple without throwing in the adjective "beleaguered."

He jumped onto the Internet feet-first, creating the AppleLust Web site as a place where he and other writers could express their thoughts about the Mac platform at a depth that didn't really exist in print magazines at the time. For David, using a Mac was a philosophical statement.

David's health was never good, but despite constant pain and a series of operations that included three kidney transplants, he never lost heart. When I lived in Nebraska for a few years, we would meet up from time to time to do some amateur astronomy, and his almost childlike love of science and the stars shone through every time. David could be stubborn and volatile, and a frustrating opponent when we disagreed, but he was always honest, polite, and articulate. He'll be missed.

Since David's death, the applelust.com domain has been taken over by another user. Former AppleLust webmaster Marc Messer, along with Chris and Tyler at MacHighway, have archived much of the original site, while Tim Robertson at MyMac is working to bring some of David's most notable writings back online as well.