Think Secret’s got the lowdown on Mac magazine circulation. The short take from this old-time web and magazine guy: it’s tough times for print magazines. I don’t agree with all the assumptions in the piece, and speaking as a print competitor to MacAddict, I think it’s a bit too focused on Macworld. But I’m glad Think Secret did the piece.
Now, is it any wonder that readers of Think Secret agree that print magazines are irrelevant? Not at all — for those people, they are irrelevant. Do I think that Macworld’s readers are generally happy with what we do in print every month? From all of our reader surveying, I can say pretty confidently that they are. Why the disconnect? Because some people find value in print, and others find it online. Still others find both valuable, but for different things.
What’s Macworld today? It’s not a magazine. No, it’s a magazine, and a web site. And it’s blogs like this one. We are not some media company that’s desperately trying to ride a print magazine down into oblivion. We don’t shun the Web, we embrace it. And we’ll continue to do so. Don’t want to read Macworld in print? No problem. Try us online, at Macworld.com, MacUser.com, macosxhints.com, or playlistmag.com…
When I bought my first Mac way back in September 2001 I also went out and bought a copy of MacWorld magazine (the November issue though). After that, I never bought another issue, or any other competing mac mag.
The issue wasn't the quality of the magazine. I soon realised that all of the information could be found online, and as a poor student with too much time on my hands, searching and finding the info online seemed a better prospect than buying a magazine every month. Add RSS+NetNewsWire to the equation and I'm always up to date with everything going on in the mac world.
Having said that, I'm glad these mags still exist. Now that I'm working I don't have the same amount of time to spend online, but I do have the extra income for a subscription. And considering that my Novermber 2001 issue is still in the bathroom rack and gets flipped through on a regular basis, I think there's a good possibility that I will start buying mags again.
Granted, as I now essentially work for Macworld, my opinion may be on the biased side, but I've been a Macworld subscriber since I went to my first Macworld conference in, I believe, 1994 (by contrast, I've only been working for MacUser.com since March).
While you can get a lot of the info online nowadays, there's still something about the tangible feeling of having a magazine to flip through that the online experience can't replace-not to mention that using the laptop in the bathroom is dangerous. :) I've just finished reading the May 2006 issue, pretty much from cover-to-cover, and I don't plan on canceling my subscription any time soon.
On the other hand, one Mac publication is certainly enough for me, so while I've bought the occasional issue of MacAddict or such, I'm not likely to add another subscription. Plus, now that I've gotten to meet/correspond with some of the faces behind the names at Macworld, I enjoy reading the magazine that much more.
I love Macworld, both the magazine and the website. I frequently utilize both sources as methods of finding my mac news and info. I'm not sure if this is true, but I almost always find information in each issue of the magazine that I had never previously seen online, which leads me to believe that not all information is actually posted online. Nevertheless, I love my subscription to Macworld and I look forward to the new issue every month. It doesn't even compare with MacAddict.
My subscriptions to both MacWorld and MacAddict are both ending soon. I'd like to renew. I usually read both the day each arrives. Lots of similar stuff to online information but there's always something in each issue that I wasn't aware of. But now that both of my subscriptions are nearing the end I'm not if I will renew. Each is ~$20 a year. Not too bad. But how many $5, $10, $20 subscriptions to magazines, newspapers, games or so forth do we all have these days? I've got to cut corners some where. All of these "cheap" reasonable prices are adding up to way too much. So, the zines go and I lose a little for it, but I still have all the really nice Mac web sites.