{"id":39084,"date":"2023-04-19T16:01:48","date_gmt":"2023-04-19T20:01:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=39084"},"modified":"2023-04-19T16:02:15","modified_gmt":"2023-04-19T20:02:15","slug":"the-end-of-computer-magazines-in-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2023\/04\/19\/the-end-of-computer-magazines-in-america\/","title":{"rendered":"The End of Computer Magazines in America"},"content":{"rendered":"

Harry McCracken<\/a> (via Jason Snell<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\n

I’m not writing this article because the dead-tree versions of Maximum PC<\/em> and MacLife<\/em> are no more. I’m writing it because they were the last two<\/em> extant U.S. computer magazines that had managed to cling to life until now. With their abandonment of print, the computer magazine era has officially ended.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Then again, if you want to quibble, Maximum PC<\/em> and MacLife<\/em> may barely have counted as U.S. magazines at the end; their editorial operations migrated from the Bay Area to the UK at some point in recent years when I wasn’t paying attention. (Both were owned by Future, a large British publishing firm.)<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

But the web didn’t render printed computer magazines obsolete overnight. PCW<\/em> had some of its fattest, happiest years as a business in the late 1990s. Even in 2008, when I left, the print magazine was a profit center, not an albatross.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the entire computer magazine category spent years in Wile E. Coyote mode. We’d blithely walked off a cliff—it’s just that gravity hadn’t kicked in yet.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Pretending that the internet didn’t exist sounds like a preposterous strategy for keeping a print magazine alive, but it somehow worked. Maximum PC<\/em> and MacLife<\/em> survived—scrawny, but with a pulse—until 2023. Their final issues were 98-page weaklings that cost $9.99 apiece and seem to have a grand total of one page of paid advertising between them—plus an article sponsored by a mail-order computer dealer.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

John Gruber<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

As McCracken himself notes, it’s impossible to overstate the essential role computer magazines played before the web. I read Macworld and MacUser cover-to-cover every month.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Chris Adamson<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

The hospital gift shop had a copy of the last issue of the last surviving print computer magazine in the US.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n