Macworld magazine: A Sad State of Affairs

Magazines.

Remember those things?

They used to contain useful information that you’d look forward to reading when they arrived in your mailbox. Yeah, me too. I remember the good old days, when magazines were thick and the number of pages of content actually outweighed the number of ads.

I subscribed to Macworld magazine. Why? It was $12 for a year subscription, and I prefer reading articles on paper vs the computer. The articles in Macworld are generally informative and useful, when they’re not busy patting Apple on the back in their reviews. (Aside: Has a Mac model received anything less than 3 stars in the last decade?)

Anyway, I digress. The bulk of Macworld magazine is advertisements, and there’s actually a few good pages of actual content (when you can find it) that make the magazine worth the $1 / month price.

The reason I’m writing this blog post is that, as part of my subscription I received two CDs, the Gaming MegaPac and the Must-Have Mac Gems, as a token of thanks for subscribing. These discs are generally worthless (what with content so readily available on the web), but I was curious to see what was on the Gaming MegaPac disc. Here’s what I found:

A Flash intro that briefly covers gaming on the Mac by editor Peter Cohen, which culminates in the menu you see above. Did you see the last two articles on the lower left of that menu? (If you can’t see ’em, let me invite you to click on the image to see the larger version.)

You’re back?

Good. The last two links are “Mac games: What to look for in 2007?” and “The Year in Mac Games: Seven Trends for ’06”. Oh, and Leopard is coming out.

So much for updated content.

It’s 2008, Macworld – at least update your CD content once in awhile, or don’t bother to offer “freebies” like this. And while you’re at it, increase the page content to match the number of ads in your magazine.

Sheesh.

-Krishna

Krishna June 12, 2008