Cast your mind back to 1996. Apple was making the PowerBook 1400, and a lot of Performas, while
MacNN was starting out as a serious journal covering Mac technology. Nothing has changed since then, and yet everything has changed: Apple is now a cultural force, it's shaping new industries, and it's even making some money now, we hear. It's transformed, even as its very DNA remains the same -- in fact, it has transformed specifically because its DNA is so strongly the same as it ever was.
MacNN has been on a similar journey, that has seen it maintain its comprehensive technology coverage and yet -- well, take a look for yourself inside.
Not at the past 19 years: we'll do plenty of that on the nice round 20th anniversary next year, but just look at the last few months. Not even one complete year: this is the best of what we've done, and the best of what you've liked, just so far in 2015. You can bet your hockey-puck iMac mouse there's more like this to come.
The way we were, circa 1999
Not so much news about the latest products, our Pointers column is more about how to get your current devices working better, and how to get more out of them all. We've covered pesky bugs, hidden features, new ways to do the tasks we all have to do. We've explained the issues that readers have said were confusing them, we've investigated the issues that confused us until we wrestled them into the ground. It turns out that there's been a lot to say: we've done over 80 Pointers tutorials so far, and we were a bit startled by that when we counted them up.
Podcasts
That's podcasts, plural. Who else does two? Reflecting our worldwide team, reflecting the huge range of news and issues concerning all things Apple, and reflecting how you deserve both in-depth analysis and a bit of fun, there are now
two podcasts from us. Count 'em: two. Every Monday, there's what we have to call
"the proper one" with editor Charles Martin leading discussion and revealing news with the best people from the entire global team: the MacNN expert in each area will usually be on that podcast, including some special guests from time to time.
Then on Thursdays, we have writer William Gallagher leading
MacNN: One More Thing. Half an hour's fast, and apparently funny, news program. We take it very seriously -- we can't help it if people laugh at us.
My Stupid Fault
We were more prepared to be laughed at for this one. We spend every day telling you how you should do things, and what the very best buying choices are, and what's going on in the Apple and tech worlds -- but we get to do that in part because we work at it. There isn't a man or woman on the staff who hasn't made a calamitous mistake with their technology, and in this series we owned up. Originally it was a worthy idea meant to show how even the best intentions go wrong. Originally it was a worthy plan to show you things that you could then avoid.
Ultimately, it became a series in which we found
progressively sillier photographs of us slapping our foreheads.
Home Server special
We put this under the Pointers banner because it was a tutorial, but it was a
whole series of them that ended up with you running a server in your house -- and getting all the benefits, while spending less than conceivably possible. Mike Wuerthele detailed all the options where you could spend cash, and he explained when it'd be worth it, but what he actually set up was the latest in his own long line of home servers that he bases on the hardware he happens to have around. If you haven't sold off that old Mac of yours yet, read the series and see how useful it can still be.
One Bad Apples column don't spoil the whole bunch, girl
One reason you can do that home server tutorial with a Mac you have lying about is that Apple generally makes these things to last. We may lust after a new Mac about 60 seconds after we bought the now-old one, and we may have need of a new one after a few years for personal or technological reasons, but these things last and last because they're designed and built that well. We celebrated one particular way this has shown itself over the years. We applauded the astonishing number of times that Apple has brought out something that was ridiculed, mocked, and expected to kill the company –– but instead eventually became gigantic hits. Sometimes eventually is a lot longer than you'd expect, but these devices did it, and they were Good Apples.
Naturally, then, we had to cover
Bad Apples: the devices that we say, sitting here judging the efforts of thousands of people and the investment of billions, should never have been made. We felt strongly about them -- and so did you. Take a read of the Bad Apples feature, and then go join in the fight in the
MacNN forum.
MacNN TRIM testing
We'd say that our
SSD hardware testing is definitive, but everybody says that. Still, we feel we're being accurate: we put series of SSDs through prolonged testing in high heat situations. When we found no news to report, we told you straight. When we found news that affects your buying decision and our buying recommendation, we told you.
We're still at it, and -- call us thorough -- we're right now performing tests utilizing resources and facilities loaned to us by the Pentagon. The one in Virginia. That Pentagon. Even Apple HQ had to concede to our methodology.
Living With
We are proud of the long-term testing that we're doing on SSDs, but the reason most places do not do this is that they, and we, normally concentrate on getting you news and reviews of new products. You should see the testing we do. Yet there are very good and very bad things that do not come out in review, until you've been using things for a protracted time. Really using them. Stress testing, and not in a lab, but on the street, in the places where we all really use these things. It takes time to discover serious flaws in the build quality, or to learn that what seemed to be a trivial device is now a vitally important part of your workflow.
Unfortunately, by the time you've found these things, the product is no longer available. Yet if you can see longer term issues in a manufacturer's work, that's a valuable help in determining whether to spend money on their latest product. If you know that every time a new iPhone comes out the last one goes down in price, it's useful to
see how well that older one lasts under pressure. Then, when a company does exceptional work that you come to deeply appreciate or that you come to depend upon, it is right and proper to applaud them in public.
The
MacNN Living With features do all this, and they are among our most popular articles -- and they're some of our very most favorite ones to write, too.
MacNN Discussions
Part of the fun of the Living With pieces is that we get to enthuse -- often to criticize but very often to celebrate -- the products that we've gotten to know, and it is just great to have that opportunity. We all like to talk about what we like, or our forums wouldn't be buzzing, but sometimes we also like to get the staff together to discuss big issues.
Take Apple Music, for example. That must be the most divisive Apple technology in years, with strong proponents championing its great features, and angry opponents decrying its problems.
By setting the staff together, you get the full picture of what is really happening, and what it means to you.
Idea to iBook, Concept to Kindle
Sometimes, you just can't get what you need from a single headline or a single writer's point of view; you need a bigger canvas,
such as a book. We're particularly proud this year that a simple joke in one email became the most giant of projects. We were reviewing a new e-book publishing tool called Vellum when the developer sent us the text of a sample book to try out. Apparently, most places take that sample, run it through Vellum, and if it all looks good at the end, fine.
"No thanks," we told Vellum. "We'll try it out by writing a book first." You say something as a joke, and it sticks in your mind. So we did it. We really did write a book just to try out a book publishing app.
We worked with author and
MacNN writer William Gallagher to write and produce a book he was scheduled to do this summer, and along the way this little idea expanded and expanded. Across three months, we detailed all the steps you need in not just publishing an e-book but in writing books, researching them, designing them, and creating paperbacks. We never did count the number of apps we used, but we reckon now that we tried about 40 different apps, and we know we picked a MacNN set of recommended ones at the end.
You can buy the book we wrote --
William Gallagher's The Blank Screen: Blogging -- and that would be nice plus: we think you'll enjoy it. However, you can also buy the book we
accidentally wrote. When we finally reached the end of this marathon, we realized we had a second book right there: you can go read
Pixels and Paper: Writing and Publishing Books with Apple's OS X and iOS this minute. Buy that book, and you'll get an expanded guide to writing and publishing e-books yourself.
The Feature Thief
One more thing. We said Apple has been paying attention to our SSD findings, but we didn't mention that the company was reportedly fascinated by another series we did called
The Feature Thief. So fascinated that their support team bought the rights to include some of what we wrote in their documentation.
At first, it didn't look like it was going to be a terribly positive series about Apple, for this series was about the way that the company abruptly strips features out of its most popular software and its penchant for creating things people love, then either rebuilding it from scratch or burning the entire house down, so to speak. Think of the way that iPhoto became Photos, and looked and performed better, but lost key functions that people had grown to rely on, had become very fond of. When that happened, there was a storm -- but our motivation for writing about it was that we've seen it before -- on many other occasions.
Of course we have.
MacNN has been here for nearly 20 years, and as much as we still delight in technology, going around the block a few times means we do know a thing or two. Specifically, when this all kicked off about Photos, we remembered exactly the same thing going on with Final Cut Pro X. We remembered it happening with Pages. And iMovie. We could go on, and we did a bit, because after you've witnessed this a few times, you also know what's coming next.
We were as aggrieved as anyone when Apple pulled these stunts on our favorite applications, but we knew the alternatives, we knew the workarounds, and we could give you a good estimate of how long it would take before things returned to normal. We could, and we did, also give you an account of exactly why and how often these sudden and unpopular moves ended up with a vastly, geometrically improved applications.
It's nearly 20 years since
MacNN started covering this stuff, and yet in 2015 it feels as if we're beginning again -- as if we're keeping our two decades of knowledge and experience, yet adding vibrant and new things, bit by bit. We are still bringing you the news, but doing more and better reviews, features, columns, podcasts, and even the occasional video. Putting ourselves out there a bit more. We're not done, and we might have done (and will do) a couple of Apple-like "hey, where did that thing I like go?" moments, but we'll try to be gentler and more fun in the process. Slowly but surely, step by step, we are building MacNN 2.0.
No, wait, point-zero releases always have lots of bugs. Call it
MacNN 2.1, hopefully. Now cast your mind forward to 2036: can you imagine what we'll all be doing then?
-- William Gallagher (
@WGallagher)
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