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MWJ Sample Issues1998: The "Cult of Macintosh" (posted June 2007) We happen to think MWJ is very good, and to show it, we're putting up sample issues for you to read, absolutely free of charge. These are, for the most part, actual issues of MWJ, as they were mailed to subscribers. You may know more information today about some of the topics covered than we knew at press time, or you may see some speculation that's now a fact one way or another. Rather than annotate these issues with such notes, we've instead provided them just as subscribers saw them, so you can judge for yourself how valuable a resource MWJ could be in your week. We're making issues available from each of MWJ's years to date, so you can track how we've done over time. You make the best decisions with more information available, and we want you to decide MWJ is worth your time and money. 1998: The Weekly Attitudinal: Cultivating Pure ThoughtsThe June 2007 New York magazine piece calling Steve Jobs "iGod," combined with iPhone hype, brings back charges of a "cult" of Apple and its followers. However, The Weekly Attitudinal, MWJ's right-by-definition opinion feature, took on this canard nearly a decade earlier. The Attitudinal examined actual scholarly definitions of "cult-like" behavior, and found that not only is there no "cult of Macintosh," but also that you could argue equally well that there was a "cult of Wintel." This is from 1998—no Mac OS X, no iPod, no iPhone, no Intel transition, so some of the references are a bit dated, but it's a good way to let you see where the Attitudinal has been on this issue all along. 2003: The HFS PrimerIn May 2003, MWJ's MacCyclopedia feature took on the most complex Macintosh feature that most people know nothing about: the HFS and HFS Plus disk formats. This special issue forgoes news and product descriptions to present 24 pages of tutorial on exactly how your hard disk works, explaining terms like "thread record" and "index node" along the way. It's one of the largest and most complex articles we've ever attempted, but it earned praise from those few people on the planet who actually write HFS-compatible code for its approach. You can't even find this kind of material in any non-programmer books - only in this free sample of MWJ.
2002: Type rights and wrongsMWJ 2002.10.05 featured The Weekly Attitudinal, our right-by-definition and bombastic opinion feature, in a double-plus-length look at the rights you have to the fonts you've purchased. In a rant that ranges from Adobe's spotted history with DMCA to Agfa-Monotype's attempts to make you pay more for embedding fonts in PDF files, the Attitudinal provides the complete story on the history of embedding, typeface technology, the rights font designers don't have in the US, and lots more. Well worth reading for any digital professional, and it comes complete with that week's news and best new products, too.
2002: The Mac OS X Printing ArchitectureOccasionally MWJ publishes single articles that are double or triple the normal length to cover complicated subjects in single bursts. That's the case with MWJ 2002.03.09, where we looked at why the Mac OS 9 print architecture is so bad, how Apple's first attempt to fix it failed, and what Mac OS X learned from that effort. We covered all the kinds of printing modules, how they fit together, what they do, how they're designed, and used that to lead into useful tips (like adding your own PPD files to Mac OS X). All that plus the week's news (remember the HP-Compaq merger?), press analysis, and the top 30 product updates of the week. Note: This issue describes the "Tioga" printing architecture in Mac OS X 10.1. Mac OS X 10.2 replaced most of the back-end with CUPS printing, but "Tioga"-style drivers still work. The information about print dialog extensions and spooling is largely still valid, even with CUPS. We clearly did not expect CUPS to make such radical changes to the printing architecture, but then again, we never claimed to say sooth.
2000: Yo Ho Hokum: Anti-Piracy NumbersSince 1996, MDJ and its sister publications have been active in debunking flawed "survey" numbers from industry groups intent on proving points at the expense of accurate methodology. In MWJ 2000.06.03, we took a look at the 1999 Anti-Piracy Survey from the Business Software Alliance and the Software and Information Industry Association, released the previous weekend. Here we reprint that article per public request, so you can see for yourself how shaky the facts are behind these continued claims of huge losses to software piracy. Unlike other publications that merely parroted these numbers, MWJ looked to see if they made any sense-and they don't. It's come up again every year since then, so it's good to know. 1999: Mac OS 9 Special IssueDistributed for years by a now-defunct online bookseller, MWJ's Mac OS 9 Special Issue has been one of the most popular documents on the operating system ever distributed on the Internet. It's comprehensive - 76 pages - with feature articles covering Sherlock 2, Multiple Users, the Multi-lingual Text Editor (a standard part of Mac OS X, by the way), the new font capabilities, Keychain Access, Software Update, Network Browser 2.0, File Sharing via IP, encryption, and all the other tiny changes in Apple's comprehensive OS update. It was ready the same month Mac OS 9 shipped, showing why MWJ readers are the most informed out there. Due to size, the issue is compressed with StuffIt.
1998: MacsBug for Non-ProgrammersReprinted from MWJ 1998.03.09 and 1998.03.16, this was a special report at MacFixIt for years. A two-part MacCyclopedia entry, "MacsBug for Non-Programmers" shows how this ultimate nerd tool for the classic Mac OS can work for you - helping you recover from crashes, or find data in RAM when a program bites the dust. You can do simple arithmetic, restart more safely, find information on running programs, and lots more. Read all about it. 1998: Apple withdraws from US retail storesIn this early 1998 issue, MWJ explained why Apple pulling out of Best Buy, Office Depot, Office Max, and Circuit City was not the "retreat" that analysts and press tried to make it, but the beginning of a new Apple retail strategy that has paid off handsomely for the company. We also examined CD-ROM spin-down times, digital signatures, news that included APS going bankrupt and the cancellation of Cyberdog, and products like StuffIt Expander 4.5, Frontier 5.0, and QuarkExpress 4.0.1r1. This is fun background as Apple continues to expand its retail stores and flirts with the same chains it withdrew from back in 1998. 1997: LaserWriter 8.5.1 plus Q&AA typical early MWJ issue, although substantially larger than usual because of the detail covered: LaserWriter driver 8.5.1 and its history, reader questions on Mac OS file I/O and RAM usage, news about analyst controversies and Apple lawsuits, and all the products from that early week so many years ago (DragThing 2.1, Conflict Catcher 4.1, QuickTime 3.0b2 - bring back memories?). 1997: Jim Carlton's book dissectedThis early issue was devoted to a single topic, described here as readers saw it in "Top of the Week":
Methodically progressing through the book and identifying seven major areas in which Carlton's work leads readers down incorrect paths, this analysis is the most comprehensive and detailed look at the major allegations in Apple that we've seen published. If you've read Apple, or intend to do so, you should read this issue. Want more?Check out our three-week absolutely free trial subscription to MWJ to see how it works for you! © 2008, GCSF, Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. easyDNS provides DNS Hosting for MDJ and MWJ. |
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