This is the second (and more interesting) part of my interview with
the incredibly friendly new editor of MacUser UK, Ian
Betteridge.
DP: Now for the crucial question: How do you see the Mac
press - and especially MacUser - react to the
competition of Internet content? Is there any reason for me to buy
MacUser if I can get all the content I want on my desktop?
IB: No magazine is able to compete with the immediateness
that the Internet delivers: We recognize that by presenting the news
differently on our website from how we deliver it in our magazine.
While a news item will have 200-400 words in our magazine, it will only
have 25 words on our website. What you want from a website are the
facts, for example: "Adobe has released InDesign 2.0". Bang!
What we do in our magazine is to add depth to it, asking questions
like: Are they actually going to be able to make a dent into Quark's
market? Talk to design bureaus: Do you have InDesign? Do you know
anybody who uses InDesign? You talk to analysts: Are there any chances
that Adobe can pull this of? Then you put all these bits together and
have a story that has both the facts and the depth, so you can gain a
perspective of what's actually going on. For you as a reader who is
thinking about switching to InDesign this will give you an idea of
what's happening in the industry. Website editors usually don't have
the time or resources to do this well enough. What magazines do well is
to provide depth; what websites do well is provide immediateness.
It's the same with help-sections and tutorials: It just doesn't work
as well online. You sit in front of your computer trying to sort
something while you are trying to read the how-to on the same computer,
while with a magazine you actually have it right in front of you.
That's one of the primary areas where magazines will always do better
than websites, just because of the limitations of the media. You will
see that magazines in general are shifting their focus to providing
more depth as time goes on. If you look at MacMinute, you will a perfect example
of how to get news on the Web just right, because it gives you an
overview over the day's news in a form that you can read in three
seconds and is updated as it happens.
DP: Why not follow the road Wired took and broaden your appeal by
providing more investigative and larger features?
IB: The problems with these stories is that they cost a lot
of money, and you will have to ask yourself how many ads can I sell on
the back of that, and the answer is: never enough.
Another good thing about print is that you get it on your desk every
fortnight or month, and at the end of the month it will still be there
for you to read if you didn't come around to it before...
DP: ...and you can read it in the bathtub!
IB: Yeah! Big Bonus. Seriously Big Bonus! I have an hour's
train ride every morning on the way to work. What do I read on the
train? I read a magazine, just like everybody else, unless they are
working on something, in which case they are using a laptop (hopefully
a Mac).
DP: I have been counting OS X stories on Slashdot and was surprised that they
actually exceed the number of stories on Debian, Ximian, and Java. Do
you think that the readership of MacUser will diversify and get
more geek readers?
IB: Absolutely. Definitely. If you look at the fact that you
can get the source code for a Unix application, compile that, and it
will run on OS X with X-Windows, this is just unbelievably cool
and technologically very seductive. It's not Microsoft. All the basics
of OS X are open source, and it's good for the Apple community,
and we are already starting to feature command-line based tutorials in
our how-to section. The other thing is the number of small, new, and
cool applications coming out...
DP: ...like Watson or Slashdock.
IB: Yeah, how cool is that.
DP: Okay, now give me an outlook on the near future of life,
the universe, and everything Mac - but "42" alone doesn't count.
IB: Apple has a potentially great future ahead.
DP: Don't you mean "insanely" great future?
IB: No, no, too retro. I'm sure Steve Jobs doesn't say that
anymore. He probably just says "neat" a lot. They've got a lot
of new potential customers out there, especially
the new iMac is
so seductive, they will sell them faster then they can make them. The
iPod will bring new customers to Apple because it's such a cool
gadget.
DP: One last thing: What's after Jobs?
IB: Surely you don't think for a second that there is life
after Jobs?
DP: Well, I contemplate it every time I see a bloody keynote
speech: Every time Jobs screws something up I think: That's it. He's
got Alzheimer's.
IB: I don't think we have to worry about that for a good ten
years.
DP: What? A sixty-year-old Jobs jumping up and down the
stage?
IB: Think about it: Is he still energetic enough? Does he
still care about the company and the product?
DP: Is he still choleric enough?
IB: Can he still talk? He might hand on some things to other
people, but I don't think he sees his work done yet. He will only hand
the company on if he thinks it doesn't get any better, and at the
moment he's still far away from that
DP: Ian, thanks a million for your time.
