A trip back in time with MacUser

Reader John sent us a fascinating little trip back in time (thanks!) he took on his blog: he found a 1996 copy of MacUser about all of the amazing applications available on the Internet, and decided go look at what had become of them. Sadly, most of them have gone missing, but the old names sound familiar: CU-SeeMe for messaging, Lycos for search, and Happy Puppy for gaming. It's almost hard to believe there was a time before Skype, Google, and Steam, but 1996 was it.

Even Apple has moved on -- their "/documents/product-support" page, something you'd think would have survived all this time, is gone. It's amazing the turnover the Internet's gone through in just 10 years. It's hard to believe that in 2029, something like Google.com will be retaken by a domain squatter as everyone's moved on to the next big thing.

But then again, things are different these days -- Google has obviously successfully figured out how to monetize their free service, and most of the original web companies went down because they could pull that off. But you never know -- a site you visit all the time might be completely changed or gone ten years from now.

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Source: http://geekoutnewyork.com/2009/01/macuser-net.php

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Analysis / Opinion Productivity Odds and ends Internet Apple

Reader John sent us a fascinating little trip back in time (thanks!) he took on his blog: he found a 1996 copy of MacUser about all of the...

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Thank you for posting. Entertaining.

I wish I had kept all my early 1980's Apple II mags. Yeah, but I also wish my mother hadn't thrown away my complete 1950-52 Bowman major league baseball card sets.

February 01 2009 at 9:20 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

LifeSux

If I have to read the word "monetize" again in a post here, I think I will puke.

February 01 2009 at 8:27 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

JIm R.

Just wondering - why (on TUAW) are you talking about Steam like it's a neat thing? They don't support Macs, and only (possibly) Intel Macs running BootCamp or another emulation program can run Steam's software. So this would hardly seem of interest for most Mac users. PC users maybe, but this is a Mac site, correct?

January 31 2009 at 3:52 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Josh Wardell

MacUser was one of my favorite mags, I've always missed it.
I wish there was an archive of it somewhere as I had a few of my letters published in it.

January 31 2009 at 1:49 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Howard

I've got a whole stash of old MacUser and MacWorld magazines that I've been slowly pitching. My oldest MacUser goes back to 93 and the most fascinating aspect to me is the price of storage. 20mb and 40mb drives for $800 or more! Now that really tells you how times have changed!

January 31 2009 at 12:51 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

elby

Great trip down memory lane.

On a side note:
I cut out 2 Lbs of fat per week by obeying this 1 old rule.
I didn't eat as much.

January 31 2009 at 12:22 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

(01)

Yeah, it's been pretty crazy how much things have changed. I remember when there were NO pay sites, purchasing online was pretty much non-existent and there was basically no corporate/ad presence. Does this make me old?

January 31 2009 at 11:48 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Luigi193

LOL! If you click that TUAW archive link, you'll see an article title "Flash Memory: Who Cares?" about if the iPod will ever have flash memory...

http://web.archive.org/web/20041205002247/http://www.tuaw.com/entry/1234000420022625/

January 31 2009 at 10:55 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply