MacTech's death spiral
Nicholas Riley notes the decline of MacTech. I've commented as well about particularly bad issues.
But, I got a new issue in the mail yesterday, and wow! I'd mock it except for the fact that it's showing that MacTech is in real trouble. The kicker? An April Fools article.
I read it, and I came across the QuickTime series, in which Tim Monroe writes QuickTime movie players for many platforms. This month, his article claimed that the iPod is running Mac OS X, and proceeds to write a player, complete with pretty "screen shots". I remember thinking that it was a cute article, but that it was a bit late in the year to be doing that.
Then I looked at the publication date. It's the April 2004 issue.
It arrived mid-June.
Every other single magazine that had an April issue had it out in March. So MacTech is three months behind.
Ow. That hurts.
So long, MacTech. I'll always fondly remember the good old days.
Comments
Hey, at least you got the joke. Just today I received an email from a reader who wanted some help because he could not reproduce my results. No, I'm not kidding....
Your complaint about late-arriving issues is a valid one, but I'm not sure how that reflects on the content of the magazine. Is the info really that time-sensitive? No. Aside from the single April Fools article, all the other articles could reasonably have appeared in a June or July issue. Rest assured that all 12 issues will appear for each year.
I'm glad that you found the QuickTime article "cute"; that's exactly what it was meant to be. More important, however, I'm sad that you seem so utterly disenchanted with the magazine. Not every article is a home run, but the Dave Mark and John Welch and Scott Knaster columns are always solid contributions. I just wish Vink would get off his b*tt and write more of the puzzle articles.
Posted by: Tim Monroe | June 17, 2004 2:55 AM