Whatever happened to the Apple oriented news media

I just realized something about the Apple oriented “press”: I don’t think it really exists anymore. We’ve got lots of podcasts and websites… but jiminy, go to any of the big Apple oriented news websites and the content is increasingly just garbage hot takes on the latest rumors, hot deals, and general fluff designed to with the primary purpose of driving affiliate links.

Just a few minutes ago  John Voorhees on Mastodon posted about the current episode of Appstories podcast was about peering “into the future to try to imagine the apps that will define Apple’s rumored VR headset.” Okay, well, that fits in with months of speculation by all of the Apple sites and podcasts that this rumored headset is coming.

My reaction was to comment back asking why they’ve not done a show on the Affinity 2.0 updates, a very real product released recently and arguably important for the Mac and iPad. Especially given the attention that Affinity has paid to the iPad I expressed my disappointment that a website/podcast known for highlighting the iPad would not have at least mentioned it. I’m not sure they’ve mentioned or discussed DaVinci Resolve or LumaFusion either. Interestingly Federico commented back that they haven’t covered it because they haven’t used it. Yet they haven’t used this non-existent product from Apple either.

Now, I’m not trying to pick on Federico or MacStories. It just struck me that the Apple news oriented press is not what it used to be. My next thought was to wonder, has MacWorld covered the Affinity apps? It’s been ages since I visited MacWorld.com so I hoped over. No. No mention of it at all that I could find using their site search. In fact, I found a 2018 review of Affinity Photo but only minor mentions of of Affinity Designer and no mention of Affinity Publisher at all.

It just got me to thinking about the Apple press of 1998 or 2000 or 2002 or 2004. I guess the decline was gradual. But what a bummer that we apparently no longer have an Apple oriented press that’s willing to actually sort through actual important news. I remember the above mentioned time period and discussions and reviews and articles about Quark and Adobe. And actual attention paid to the important software and why it mattered. Real reviews of real products. I did a search on Quark and the results from pre-2012 painted a picture of an Apple press that fits my memory. Namely that they took the issue of important software and software categories seriously.

I think TidBits.com might be one of the only remaining Apple sites that still properly covers this stuff. Are there any others?

6 thoughts on “Whatever happened to the Apple oriented news media

  1. Guido

    Hi Denny,
    I haven’t thought about your point, but I think your right.
    The coverage of the new (and fantastic) Affinity Suite or Lightroom (which has a few USPs that I really like and pay for) or the great Apple Office Apps like Numbers and Pages on the big news sites (or podcasts) is only marginally at best. Why? Maybe it is because they personally have no need to use these apps. Maybe the topics are not ‘hot’ enough and need some time to digest. When it comes to photography most of the authors or podcasters are happy with a new release of a shiny feature in Pixelmator (“change your ‘boring’ background against a full moon at night anyone?”). No doubt, thats a nice software with some gimmicks, but it is by far no competition for Affinity or Adobe.

    I’m from Germany and luckily we have a very strong and independent IT-news company (www.heise.de) which is 40 years in business and still doing well. They have several (printed! and digital) magazines covering different topics (e.g. IT and technology in general, Mac&i [sic], photography, and a few more). I checked their portal and counted at least 4 entries about the new V2-Suite since December. One is an in-depth review and comparison with V1. But most of them are behind a paywall and in german.

    Thats why I follow your site and I enjoy your take on these apps. You get immediately the impression that there is someone who writes about what he is really using and how that app fits into his daily life.

    Therefore, I’m sorry that I cannot supply you with some new and interesting website but instead want to say a huge ‘thank you’ for your effort and your postings.
    Cheers and all the best, Guido

    1. DennyH

      Guido, thanks so much for taking the time to comment and for reading my blog! It’s great to hear that you still have a solid tech press in Germany. I really wish we had at least one such publisher here.

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