Readers of Low End Mac Website Assist in Search for MacPrices’ Writer Charles W. Moore

FEATURE: 06.29.18 – Charles W. Moore, 66, writer of “The ‘Book Mystique” column here on MacPrices has not written a column nor been heard from since October of last year and a personal call for help to the Mac web-verse has garnered results and found news about his status.

Earlier this month, I wrote two separate pieces which called attention to our missing writer, one here on MacPrices titled “Where in the World is Charles W. Moore?” And the second on the other website I write for, Low End Mac titled “In Search of Charles W. Moore” Both stories contained the same general information on what we knew about Moore and ended with a call for help from colleagues, friends, and family.

The people who came forward to help were mainly regular readers of Low End Mac where Moore wrote from 1999 writing the “Miscellaneous Ramblings” column until 2012 and continued writing news round-ups through 2013 for the site. A lot of the members of the Low End Mac Facebook group where my article was shared were eager to help, scouring the web for any information that would tell us what the status of Moore was: from his home address and mobile phone number queried online (the address being a match, confirmed by me though I’m embarrassed to admit here that I realized after the fact that I had Moore’s home address and phone number the entire time but the mobile number unconfirmed) to obituaries — thankfully none were found — and his other recent work writing news about biotechnology.

Unbeknownst to most fans of Moore’s work writing about the Mac, he has also as of late been writing about biotechnology, or as he put it, “cutting edge medical research for an outfit in Texas” which he told me about in an email conversation back in March 2015. That outfit is Bionews Services which I only discovered when doing a Google search for a link to the news service that Moore is their technology editor and has been for a number of years now.

I wanted to find out a little more about Moore’s lesser known gig outside of Mac computing so I reached out to Bionews Services and got a response from their executive editor, Mike Nace, who said, “Charles began with us in March of 2013, initially covering a wide range of science and biotech stories on our websites. I knew Charles previously because I had published a site called ‘the iPhone 5 News Blog,’ which he also wrote for. When we began staffing up writers for BioNews, he was the first person I contacted to join the team.”

During the first two years, Moore handled a wide range of feature-length stories and interviews in addition to his daily coverage of news, such as an interview he conducted with Neil Bush, a businessman and investor who is one of the sons of 41st U.S. President George H.W. Bush.

“Throughout the inception of BioNews, Charles was our ‘heavy hitter.’ His articles generally were the ones that drove the most engaged traffic to our sites,” said Nace. “After about a year in to his tenure here, we gave him a kind of honorary ‘Contributing Editor’ title, and later on, Technology Editor, since we began to funnel any and all stories that we covered about cutting-edge technologies within the life sciences to him. Given his background in covering consumer tech, it was a good fit.”

Unfortunately and to my surprise, none of the people who came forward to help were readers of MacPrices, Moore’s most current workplace and one of the main websites he writes for.

However, the one person who responded to my plea and reached out to help, actually getting a hit, so to speak, was by coincidence a friend of mine who is a PR professional with ties to the Mac and Apple enthusiast community who was directed to my article on Low End Mac after her husband saw a message on Twitter by Adam Engst, publisher of the Tidbits publication, who asked if anyone had information on Moore.

“Adam Engst tweeted, my husband saw it and asked me about Charles. I asked him (my husband) to send the link which he did and took it from there,” said Naomi Pearce, owner of Pearce Communications and a partner of CMD-D.

Through her extensive research, Pearce was able to find an email address for Moore — one that I was not personally in possession of — and contacted him to let him know that people were looking for him and if he was all right. This garnered a response not from Moore himself but from Helen Moore, his wife of 44 years. His wife informed Pearce of what was going on to which Pearce forwarded me the email which allowed me to get in contact with Moore’s wife at the private email address.

Moore’s wife responded to my email and from what I now know and can report, Moore is currently dealing with some personal medical issues and was hospitalized for four months and finally returned home last month. His wife and Moore are both touched by everyone’s concern.

She provided this official statement for publication:

“Thank you to all those well wishers. Charles is still under a doctor’s care and we are all hoping for the best. We are taking it one day at a time and trusting in God’s providence.”

I was curious to know how Pearce conducted her research and she had this to say.

“I just adore Charles and was very concerned to read he seemed to be missing,” said Pearce. “I gave it a shot using well-guarded data collected to allow clients to take a write-off related to review units. The IRS being retro came in handy. This is the first time I’ve ever dug into the data to try to help find someone missing. I’ll admit it was pretty gratifying when it worked, and I was relieved and glad to help.”

Of course, the first two persons I reported the news about Moore to, once I received it, were the publishers of the two websites where my two articles were published and they shared the following thoughts on Moore having been found.

Dan Knight, publisher of Low End Mac, Moore’s former place of employment, said, “I am glad to hear that Charles W. Moore is still among us,” said Knight. “Charles was one of the most prolific writers on the Mac web, starting in 1995. He outlasted many of the sites he wrote for and consistently advocated for frugal (a.k.a. low-end) choices in computers, vehicles, and even hiking boots.”

Our own Steve Hildreth, publisher of MacPrices where Moore still has a column said, “We wish Charles all the best during his recovery and are grateful he is surrounded by friends and family in this trying time.”

For me, I am finally relieved to know that my colleague and friend has been found and while not well currently, is on the road to recovery and hopefully will be back to writing again soon.

One of the things I admired about Moore was his support and he would from time to time, plug some of my featured articles on PowerBook Central (now merged with MacPrices as of last month), where we were both colleagues and first met, in some of the news roundups he wrote for the numerous other websites he worked for giving my articles more exposure among the Mac enthusiast community.

I’m also glad to know that he is alive because one of the stories I had planned for both here on MacPrices and over on Low End Mac was a tribute piece to Moore that celebrated and detailed his life. Of course that would have only been if I had confirmed his passing. Thankfully, I won’t have to write that one anytime soon!

Thank you to all the readers of Low End Mac who pitched in to help and especially Naomi Pearce who hit the home run. I would ask all readers of MacPrices to keep Charles W. Moore, his wife Helen, and his family in your thoughts and prayers. Best wishes and God bless you, Charles!