“The internet has claimed yet another print victim as London-based MacUser Magazine, one of the oldest Apple-centric magazines in the world, announced on Friday that it would wind down operations following the release of its February 2015 issue,” AppleInsider reports.
“Launched in 1985, MacUser is perhaps most famous for inventing the “mouse” ratings system later popularized by MacWorld in the U.S.,” AppleInsider reports. “‘MacUser has helped make Dennis Publishing the business it is today and has contributed to establishing us as the largest technology publisher in the UK,’ Dennis Publishing executive Ian Westwood said in a release. ‘The decision to cease publication of MacUser was very tough and one that was not taken lightly. Unfortunately, due to challenging market conditions, the closure was unavoidable.'”
Read more in the full article here.
Read the full statement from Dennis Publishing about MacUser‘s closure here.
MacDailyNews Take: We fondly remember thumbing through MacUser on the magazine racks in the Borders bookstore before it went out of business a few years ago.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Lynn Weiler” and “gedboy” for the heads up.]
Did you buy any of the thumbed thru magazines? Or is the tag missing?
Yes, we did. Somewhere around here, buried, is a pile of them.
somehow the ” part of my message got lost. But I feel honoured to receive an official response from MDN.
Had hundreds of them going back to the 80s most of which I reluctantly threw away as they were collecting dust, do funny to glimpse through them as they talked glowingly of technology that is laughable today. They were great mags which I always looked forward to coming through my door keeping me occupied for days usually. Indeed out of art college I very nearly got a job with Dennis Publishing though working on a different magazine, they were always renowned for technically superb, beautifully designed and innovative mags, such a shame yet inevitable end I guess.
As a postscript for those who don’t know Felix Dennis, who sadly died last year was notorious in the UK for the OZ trials a fascinating part of 70s pop culture that involved varied input from many of the great personalities of the period including John Lennon. Do check him out well worth a read,
Felix was a poet and tree lover in his spare time. I saw him on stage presenting a splendid oration evening at Chipping Norton Theatre, UK. His pulpit was a tree trunk, the background assorted a/v stuff, his voice deep, dark-brown and rolling. A great evening, and his book signing afterwards was just as much fun – my gf of the time bought armfuls as Christmas prez.
I have a copy of issues #1 and #2. I thinks they just might go up in value now.
I’ve still got a copy of the 1997 issue of Wired with the old Apple logo wrapped in thorns with the word “Pray.” below. Don’t know what to do with it. Is it worth framing?
Maybe I should wait until Wired bytes the dust (pun intended) and then sell it on eBay. After all, it’s a wireless world now.
MacAddict was my favourite. Still have them all, and all but one disk
Sigh. I remember them all. Out of loyalty, I still subscribe to the few that are left on the Newsstand. But information flows so quickly now that waiting for a month seems kinda pointless.
Print could and should find a way to reinvent itself. I read books and magazines. Nothing like the smell of a good book or bookstore, of paper in your hands. From comics to graphic novels to magazines to softcovers to hardcovers, I check the all out in the store. Not on Amazon, not on a Kindle, or even my iPad. I’d rather paper come back than vinyl. Life mya have surface noise, too, Benmont Tench, but I’ve always hated it. I vote for new technologies, not old.
paper is dead. dang it.
It is not just the demise of paper magazines.
Now that Macs and iOS devices define the mainstream and the aspirations of gawd knows how many hundreds of millions of people, a Mac centric magazine may have outlived it’s useful life. The mainstream tech press used to ignore the Mac and Apple.
That does not seem to be a problem any more.
I’m sorry they’re shutting down. It was a well designed magazine. Good writing and reviews. Unfortunately, the magazine business has gone very competitive because of the Internet.
Over the past several years, I’ve switched to reading from my iPad as opposed to print. No more stacks of magazines that have to be recycled each month. With digital, I have access to previous issues if I want to go back to something. Something not practical with print unless you like clutter and ugly stacks of magazines.
Plus through several web portals, I have access the the latest Mac news. I’m surprised they didn’t
continued:
do better with they’re web version.
Everyone else is shuttering things. So at least they aren’t putting shutters on MacUser. They’d look odd.
MacUser (and the other “Mac something” magazines) were once my source for new news about the Mac world, and I’d look forward to getting the monthly issue. Now, I get that from MDN. So it’s all YOUR fault, MDN… 😉
I’ve got about 50 copies, the first one starting January 1997. Great magazine, sad to see it go out of print.
It’s ironic that MacUser stuck around like a champ during the hard years only to go bust at the pinnacle of Apple’s success.
hadn’t thought of it that way, but you’re sure right as rain.
MacUser/Macworld were magazines in their time but unfortunately they sort of shot themselves in the foot by running after ad dollars.
What I mean is that they did a lot of reviews so that companies that made those products would buy ad space — in spite of the growth of the internet. But reviews in a paper rag can never compete with the internet where there are dozens of reviews with video links AND actual consumer comments — all appearing 2-3 months faster than the print magazine (it takes that long to get a paper mag together)
‘News’ type articles are also useless because when paper mags come out it’s all old.
What MacUser should have done was concentrate on ‘Tips’ guides like “100 ways to max out Yosemite” or “Facebook for business”. These are infinitely more useful and people might buy them as helpful manuals. ( MacUser had articles on these topics of course but too much of the space was on reviews or news. )The internet is sometimes good for such guides as well but often you have to wade through a lot of crap (100 ways to max out Yosemite might be in 10 different articles , some written by questionable amateurs) — guides written by qualified Pros are better and I’m willing to pay for it to save time surfing. Guides also have longer ‘shelf life’ than reviews and this might actually increase ad revenue .
nah, the internet killed that magazine…specifically, the iPad.
What killed the radio?
Rap
Video.
“Video killed the radio star”
“nah, the internet killed that magazine”
that was part of my argument.
pointing out that it should do stuff which internet doesn’t do well.
Didn’t they stop publishing in the USA a number of years ago? Did MacWorld buy them out?
I use to subscribe to MacUser way back in the 1980’s but after reading a few idiotic stories from MacUser columnist John C. Dvorak, I canceled my subscription.
In Apples famous first commercial, at 47 seconds, I always considered the second guy from the left to be Dvorak.
Kind of looks like Ballmer, but yea, I’ll go with Dvorak.
I subscribed to MacUser for many years. USA version went belly up many years ago, UK version lasted until now I reckon.
I have been a Mac User since 1985 and am a real fan of the Mac. I have purchased two issues of Mac User during that time and thumbed through a few on the shelf afterwards. That was still in the 1980’s but found them to be trash and full of crappy ads of stuff that I would never use or already had. The articles were trite and didn’t inform.
Subscribed for almost 10 years…great magazine (US) back in the day.
Former subscriber.
They were overtaken by the internet. The rumours were quicker and more up to date on the net and by the time they had pictures of new releases I’d already seen it at the Apple Store ( excluding iPhone and the watch which had shows months before release ) so ina way SJ’s need for secrecy, followed by “available from today” is what killed it.
Personally I preferred – iCreate which released as a very high quaility mag packed with tutorials and high res photos on quality paper.unfortunately it too failed because itcouldntkeep pace with the internet,
I keep my old mags so that when I have the time ti flash up some of the old gear, I can use them for background details on how theyworked. Its also interesting to see what we used to pay for gear and memory etc.
Ink allergies keep me away from print these days…
Bummer, I bought many a macuser magazine in the days.
Hmmm, now that I’m thinking about macuser, I think I still have their very first magazine…
Back in the day I subscribed to virtually all of them: MacWorld, MacUser, MacAddict, MacHome, even MacWeek — as well as a few others. Slowly they all went away. If i recall correctly, MacWeek was the first to die. In the U.S. MacWorld and MacUser merged, and as a result I had a subscription good for over five years in advance for the resulting MacWorld. Now, MacWorld is only an online publication and MacUser, even in the U.K. is no more.
I’m not surprised. When MacWorld and MacUser were competing magazines they were at times almost a half in thick — special editions when a new Mac came out could be even thicker. The last physical MacWorld I received was significantly less than a quarter inch thick.
Back in the day they did truly in depth reviews, whether it was Aldus Pagemaker or the Mac Iici. I haven’t seen reviews like that in years, not even online, from any of the historic Mac magazine houses.
Even their online presences are poor. My MacWorld physical subscription got converted to an online subscription when they ceased physical publications. Over the past several years I’ve scanned through their online reviews and opinion pieces. They’re poor in comparison to the historical reviews.
AnandTech was one of the last bastions of truly in depth reviews — and Anand was very much in favor of Macs, even though he put forth great efforts to be as unbiased as possible in his reviews. But, now with Anand going to work for Apple, AnandTech faces an uncertain future. Hopefully, the remaining crew will carry on with respectable, in depth reviews and not succumb to the “first but not in depth or even accurate” trend being followed by virtually everyone else.
Oh, and as an aside, Dvorak’s column on the last page of MacUser was called “The Devil’s Advocate”. Dvorak’s job was to write stuff that poked fun at Macs and MacUsers. Occasionally he even pointed out something that really needed to be fixed. The column served that purpose well. He annoyed the hell out of me sometimes, but that really was the column’s purpose.