Mac|Life née MacAddict tells Macworld mag to Bring it On...

There's one print magazine that puts both MacWorld and MacAddict to shame. UK bi-weekly MacUser is a brilliant publication: smart, useful, incredibly well designed, and a must read. With a new issue every 2 weeks it does a very good job of providing indepth news analysis.
www.macuser.co.uk

From the MacAddict forums:

Ah, the Web ... we're all one big info-sharing family these days, eh?

We were juuust about to go public with our plans for the new, bigger, better magazine, but we wanted to get all of our personnel ducks in a row, first. But now that the word is out, here's the deal:

1. MacAddict is, indeed, changing its name to MacLife early next year.

2. The new magazine will be bigger, thicker, better-looking, and stuffed with how-to articles, more-ambitious feature stories, authoritative reviews, and plenty of the engaging, entertaining content that has made MacAddict so popular and such an enjoyable read.

3. The name MacAddict was from another time (1996), back when our stories were about "Fighting Back for the Mac." Apple was on the ropes, and a feisty attitude was exactly the right tack to take. Today, Apple is riding high -- its products are the most elegant, coolest, most industry-influencing available. We don't need to fight back anymore. We won.

4. I'm not going away; I'll still be an integral part of the MacLife team, but I'll be contributing in a different way -- I'd tell you more about it now, but, hey, we have to keep some surprises, right? One major hint: When you see your first copy of big, thick, gorgeous MacLife, fire up Safari and browse on over to MacLife.com. Oh, and if you're interested, moving on from being the editor in chief to my new role was my idea, not management's.

5. Times change. Magazines change. Those that don't respond to new realities -- such as the fact that Apple is doing great and that our lives have become Mac lives -- wither and fade. Personally, I'm not a witherer and a fader -- and neither are our readers. Next year is going to kick serious hiney -- and MacLife will be kicking it along with Apple and all the third-party hardware and software folks. When MacAddict launched in September of 1996, its first cover contained the message "Why the Mac's Future Is Bright," but the article that accompanied that statement had more than a little whistling in the dark in it. Today, there's no question that the Mac -- and Apple, and the iPod, and whatever comes next -- has a sparkling future. So we're going to create an equally sparkling, entertaining, info-packed, gorgeous new magazine. The time is right; the time is now.
Rik Myslewski
Editor in Chief
MacAddict


http://www.macaddict.com/forums/post/1292583#p1292583

MacAddict hung its hat on the OS wars nail, and that philosophy (such as it was: really, it was a marketing hook) has been dying for years. And they've inched away from it, but too little too late. Lately it's sounded more like a dad trying to sound hip to his kids, and it's been painful. (And clearly there have been business-level issues; as an editor, I actually read mastheads, and it's been pretty tough to see the staffing changes.)

Unfortunately, people not in the publishing profession don't understand that any redesign or relaunch takes a few months. The first issue is important, but there are months of tweaking both editorial and design. (And the business side gets feedback both from distributors and from advertisers that plays into the tweaking.) It'll be a bit unfair to call the relaunch a success or failure based on the first issue, but it'll happen. (The magazine I work for relaunches every four to five years; that isn't atypical.)

FWIW, to the commenter who thinks "print is dead," the monthly magazine I work for has 1.3 million paid subscribers. Your lack of interest in reading doesn't translate to the rest of the country. (And for disclosure, I was an associate editor for a monthly Macintosh mag in the late '80s, but I haven't been in tech publishing since a six-year stint at PC Week ended a decade ago.)

I subscribe to MacWorld and MacAddict and enjoy both. One of the reasons why I like MacAddict is because it is NOT MacWorld. To me MacAddict represents the "geekiness" of the Mac culture and generally has some fun articles while MacWorld tends to take a more professional approach on things. Now that MacAddict wants to be MacWorld, I will be rethinking my decision once renewal time comes around.

Jason - count me in for TUAW Hacks :) The comment order goes haywire sometimes if people don't activate their comments right away. Keeps us on our toes, though!

Jason - best. comment. ever. ;)

Thanks, Laurie.

(I seem to have magically bumped my comment down two notches. Can the O'Reilly book on TUAW Hacks be far behind?)

I appreciate Mr. Aaron's confidence, and we welcome a (new? relaunched?) competitor into the Mac print magazine space. But let's be clear here: MacAddict/MacLife has less than half the circulation of Macworld. Macworld has beaten MacAddict on the newsstand, traditionally MacAddict's strong suit, every month for the better part of two years. Macworld is the recognized leader in the Mac magazine world by a wide margin. Leapfrog Macworld? Let me kindly suggest that the publishers of MacLife first need to get within spitting distance. And we wish them well at doing so. I have nothing but respect for the editorial staff at MacAddict.

Although given Rik Myslewski's statements in the MacAddict forums it appears that MacLife will actually have a web presence, which is excellent. In the spirit of Apple welcoming Windows 95 into the world of long filenames, Macworld -- and the numerous editors and writers who make our sites (Macworld, MacUser, Mac OS X Hints, and Playlist) some of the best sources for Mac news, reviews, opinion, and help/how-to info on the Web -- welcomes MacAddict to the party.

Sorry to those of you who still don't get the pipe reference. The pipe is there for the fight. The fight with Macworld. The fight where Mac|Life attempts to kick Macworld ass. They need a pipe because they can't take Macworld on with their bare hands. Get it now? It made perfect sense to me when I wrote it, but I suppose it was a bit too subtle :)

This is exactly why I subscribe to MacAddict -- to escape the boring MacWorld/MacGeek world. My subscription runs out in February 07 and I don't know about the change.

Yes, MacAddict won people because it was a Maverick in the magazine world. It was fun to read. And before DSL, the CD was a bonus. I no longer even use the CD because most of the software on it is pretty dated.

So I recommend chucking the CD and lowering the price back to a respectable $19.99. Spending more than $29 is too expensive for a magazine.

What readers want in a magazine are:

- Reviews and commentary -- why is the upgrade worth it

and

- Tips and Techniques that make you go "AHA!"

Stick with what readers want and not what someone in accounting needs.