Om

Om

Om died two days ago, after a long battle against a bum heart.

Om and I often sat next to each other at Apple keynotes. This was not at all surprising or odd, insofar as we’d been friends for 20 years. Folks at Apple PR knew that we were close, and would often pair us together in post-keynote media briefings. I always enjoyed being paired with him. He asked keen questions. He saw through bullshit. He found holes in arguments. He took everything in. When I felt overwhelmed, he seemed serene. Om always seemed serene, period. His own photography reflects his presence.

Also, he was funny and fun. Profoundly generous. A good person to be around. A great person to know and be known by. He knew everyone and everyone knew Om. A lot of the people I know in this racket, I know through Om. Every time he’d introduce me to someone, he’d embarrass me with praise for my work. He greeted everyone with a compliment and whatever he said, he meant it. He had kind words to offer everyone because he had a gift for recognizing good things about everyone. He didn’t have an insincere bone in his body, which made him intensely lovable as a friend, and fiercely acerbic and accurate as a critic of technology. “He did not mince words” and “Everyone loved him” do not usually apply to the same person. They did with Om.

He was, of course, a Yankees fan.

So, no, it was not odd that he and I gravitated toward each other at Apple events. But the fact that Om continued to be invited to these events, with a media badge, was in fact unusual. He had stepped away from day-to-day journalism and became an investor back in 2014. A decade later, he was still on the short list of top invitees to events at Apple. His reputation warranted that respect. His ongoing writing and analysis — right up until the very end — continued to earn it. So of course Om continued to be invited to, and attend, these events. He was Om Fucking Malik. His presence improved any room, and lifted everyone’s mood. He made grumps smile. You couldn’t help it.

When he stepped aside from his namesake website GigaOm in 2014, Om wrote:

“Now it is time for the next chapter,” wrote Derek Jeter, the New York Yankees shortstop and my 2nd favorite Yankee (behind Bernie Williams), sharing his intention to retire at the end of 2014. “I have new dreams and aspirations and new challenges. And I want the ability to move at my own pace, see the world and finally have a summer vacation.” I relate to Jeter’s desire to find life outside of work. Living a 24-hour news life has come at a personal cost. I still wake in middle of the night to check the stream to see if something is breaking, worrying whether I missed some news. It is a unique type of addiction that only a few can understand, and it is time for me to opt out of this non-stop news life. After five years as a “venture partner,” I am joining True Ventures as a partner, and thus bringing an end to my life as a professional journalist.

Om, somehow, went straight from new-media wunderkind to éminence grise of tech journalism. Back when he was blogging, he blogged hard — multiple breaking-news posts per day, every day, while he was working as an acclaimed reporter for Business 2.0, Forbes, and Red Herring. That’s not what he did for the latter half of his career at all. He began changing his pace and perspective after suffering a heart attack in 2008, at the age of 42. He knew what he wanted to change, he told us, and then he did it. Thinking about his career transformation brings to mind the great Donald Knuth’s remarks regarding email:

Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration. I try to learn certain areas of computer science exhaustively; then I try to digest that knowledge into a form that is accessible to people who don’t have time for such study.

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