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perspective essay up today on the changing Mac magazine landscape, which has become pretty barren over the past several years, most recently with the demise of Mac Home magazine. Macworld and MacAddict are still around (the latter changing its name to MacLife).
As Gene notes, back in the day there were two major monthly Mac magazines - Macworld and MacUser. In the days before the Internet, and for some time afterward in places where it wasn't available yet, these books were the lifeline for Mac information, new product announcements, news, commentary, product reviews, and of course advertisements. Pages and pages of advertisements.
However, the Web changed everything, and soon Macworld and MacUser found themselves competing for a diluted advertising revenue pool. The solution arrived at was to merge under the Macworld name - a move that wasn't really satisfactory for fans of either magazine, and the new Macworld turned out to be thinner than either of its progenitors had been in their heyday.
I continued subscribing to Macworld off and on over the next few years, and still enjoyed the print format, but found that the magic that had accompanied the arrival of my subscription copy in the mail each month was gone. The news contained was stuff I had read weeks before in the Mac Web, and the magazine kept getting slimmer - a shadow of its former self. I haven't renewed my sub. now for several years.
One Mac magazine Gene didn't mention in his commentary was MacToday, which I considered in many respects the cream of the crop, and not only because I used to write for it from time to time. MacToday was different, thanks primarily to the editorial tone set by founder and editor Scott Kelby, who was able to successfully combine a serious focus on solid information with an off-the-wall sense of humor. Scott, IMHO, is the funniest Mac writer.
Mac Today was great, but seeing the proverbial writing on the wall, in January, 201, Kelby's KW Media Group announced that it would morph into "Mac Design Magazine," the first how-to magazine strictly for Macintosh graphic designers, Digital Video producers, and Mac-based Web designers, focusing mainly on graphics tutorials, tips, and tricks, and thus no longer competing for the same general readership market as Macworld. Mac Today subscribers were shifted to Mac Design.
That it was a smart move is evidenced by the fact that the magazine is still around more than five and a half years later, now published under the title Layers Magazine - The How-To magazine for everything Adobe, with Scott Kelby still Editor-In-Chief.
For more information, visit:
http://www.layersmagazine.com/
Scott is also Editor-in-Chief of the Photoshop Elements Techniques newsletter (magazine format), and Photoshop User Magazine - the official publication of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP).
You can check out these publications at:
http://www.photoshopelementsuser.com/
and
http://www.photoshopuser.com/psuser.htm
Scott Kelby is also author of several Mac books, about which you can find more at:
http://www.scottkelby.com/
Focusing on niche markets is doubtless the key to survival in print publishing for Mac-oriented readership. I still write for several print media (not usually on computer-related topics) and still subscribe to several print magazines like The Atlantic Monthly and Car Guide, but for general news and product information, the Mac Web now reigns supreme.
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Charles W. Moore
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