MacSurfer Shutting Down
Not seeing a viable future with subscriptions, MacSurfer and TechNN will cease operations effective immediately. Please allow a few weeks to process forthcoming refunds. If need be, subscription inquiries can be addressed to the Publisher at the bottom of the Homepage.
Thanks kindly for your support, and thanks for the memories...
I’m sad to see this, as it was a great site for many years, and perhaps the best way pre-Twitter to find lots of stories from a wide variety of sites.
For many years, they were an invaluable resource, a manageable way to quickly see what was going on in the Apple world without having to subscribe to hundreds of sites and spend literally all of your time trawling headlines.
But as social media and podcasting grew in popularity and RSS and “visiting actual websites” ebbed, MacSurfer struggled to adjust.
Previously:
Update (2020-03-12): Steven Sande:
It’s sad to see websites shut down for any reason, and it seem like some of the older, more established sites just aren’t making it anymore. […] Well, that list gave me a good look at the sites that are no longer with us…
[…]
That’s not including The Unofficial Apple Weblog (killed by AOL in February, 2015), MacCentral, Macsimum News, and Apple Daily Report — websites that Dennis and I were involved with over the years.
3 Comments RSS · Twitter
Sad to see so many sites falling by the wayside. Even discounting social media (as in the big sites like Facebook), the landscape has changed for Apple news. You do not have to go to a specialty site to get news on Apple and really have not for at least the last 10 years. Possibly longer because of the iPod years being such a mainstream crossover.
Of course there is still a niche to carve out. Programming on/for Apple devices. Content creators using Apple devices. Heck, even gaming. But having dozens of general purpose news sites focused just on Apple? Probably not a good market right now.
Do I think we will still have a handful out there? Of course. Tidbits, OSNews. iMore, etc.
MacRumors, 9to5Mac, …
Sustaining a news site based on ads has gotten a lot harder, which isn't a Mac-specific phenomenon. As for VersionTracker, would it really be as useful today as it was back then?
OTOH, some of it has gotten better. Tons of Mac-specific or -focused podcasts now, for example. I only wish they were maybe a little less opinionated and did a bit more homework.
It’s probably been more than a decade since it was a daily visit for me, but from 1995 to around 2010, I visited that site multiple times per day. VersionTracker died an ignoble death around the same time at the hands of CNET. Both of those sites were incredibly important resources to this Mac user.