On May 17, 2025, Jeremiah Leif Pickett Johnson, 45, died suddenly of a cardiovascular event. Known as “Leif” to his friends and colleagues and “Jer” to his family, he most recently lived in San Francisco, where he worked as a cherished member of the Apple App Store editorial team. He served as Games Curation Editor, evaluating and featuring games across iPhone, iPad, and Mac, building on a storied career including a stint as an editor at Macworld and games reviewer for IGN, Vice, Rolling Stone, GameSpot, and PC Gamer. Leif was born June 21, 1979, in Beaumont, Texas. During his grade school and teen years, his family lived in multiple locations around Texas—Lumberton, Kountz, Rockport, Freer, Pearland, Bastrop, and Goliad. As a teenager, Leif worked as a ranch hand and bona fide cowboy, once participating in a historic cattle drive across the United States. A prolific young poet, he was part of the “Cowboy Poetry” revival movement in the 1990s, and he was a notable figure at the annual National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada. He toured the western United States as a solo performer, incorporating guitar, mandolin and song into his readings. Leif received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and history at the University of Texas at Austin in 2003, and a Master of Arts degree in the history of science from the prestigious University of Chicago in 2004. He completed ongoing funded research at Yale University’s Beinecke Library. He married and remained in Chicago for ten more years, managing promotions and artist interviews for S2 Art Group/Jack Galleries, an atelier of fine lithographs featuring classic movie posters as well as contemporary artists including Shepard Fairey and Tom Everhart. Here Leif honed his talent for interior and graphic design, with an artistry that produced stunning gallery arrangements and showfloor imagery, and which later spilled over into ongoing volunteer design work for organizations like an international animal rescue society, a community-based swing dance group, and a major independent perfumery. In 2014, Leif joined his family at Crocodile Springs Ranch in Goliad, Texas, where he helped maintain the 100-acre property while expanding his portfolio in games journalism. During this time he published an article for Playboy called “The Unknown Struggles of Gaming in the Sticks,” opening with an anecdote about removing venomous vines from his internet receiver: “It’s late last week and I have an old machete in hand, and I’m in hunting boots scaling a 25-foot wall . . .” His move to San Francisco in 2018 began his time covering the Apple ecosystem. Leif fell in love with every place he visited or called home, diving deep into local culture, neighborhoods, history, art and architecture. His friends, including locals, considered him the ultimate tour guide. Travel dotted much of his life, with journalism work and a broad circle of international friends taking him to every continental state and many other countries including Iceland, France, Italy, Ireland and Argentina. He was immensely fond of cross-country trips and hiking in the mountains of the San Francisco Bay Area. He adored languages and was accomplished in English, Spanish, French, academic German and Latin. He took pride in his study of written Mandarin and Japanese as well. He owned an astonishing collection of fine calligraphy pens and notebooks, often writing assignments—including video game reviews—in longform on paper. He enjoyed fencing and archery, was a talented singer, and played guitar, mandolin, piano, harmonica and violin. And he was gentle to animals great and small, forging decades-long bonds with his family’s Doberman pinschers and his free-roaming palomino horse, Blaze. Leif is survived by his mother, Patricia Elaine Pickett Johnson, his father, William Sam Johnson Jr., sister Stephanie (husband Terry), brothers Sam III (wife Michelle), Chris (wife Stephanie), and Dusty (wife Nicole), many nieces and nephews, cousins, aunts and uncles, and scores of dear friends and colleagues across the country and the world. Intimate celebrations of life will take place across the Western United States in the coming months. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the family.