MacEdition

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MacEdition was an online publication focused on Apple Macintosh news, rumors, and analysis. It was created in February 2000 in response to reader dissatisfaction with MacWeek.com and the perceived vacuum of good, professional Mac journalism left when the print MacWeek was renamed to eMediaWeekly. The site's most popular feature was a rumor column penned by the writer formerly known as Mac the Knife.

The site was community based. All content was written by members of the MacEdition community, and editorial direction was driven on the Spork Boards, a semi-private web bulletin board populated by ex-MacWeek.com community members. The Spork Boards were begun in response to the closure of the Electric Knife web forum, which had been hosted at knifeboard.macpublishing.net by MacWeek.com, and frequented by Mac the Knife. The Electric Knife forums had been a hub of Macintosh-related news and rumors in the early to mid-1990s, and a core group of insiders had broken more than one rumor there before any other media outlet. The Spork Boards became a substitute and a refuge for many Mac rumor diehards including a former Mac the Knife columnist, and for a time during the planning and running of MacEdition the boards were a thriving part of the Macintosh media.

For three years, MacEdition was considered a respected web resource for the Mac professional during a time when companies like ZDNet were homogenizing their content. The community nature of MacEdition's existence was important because it, as a successful publication, pre-dated very successful blog-based publications such as those from Weblogs Inc. and Gawker.

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  • Tat's the Way Mac Heads Like It, Leander Kahney, WIRED: "In the late 1990s, MacWeek's now-moribund Mac the Knife Forums were a hotbed for Mac fans with Apple tats [tatoos]; a number of pictures were posted to the gossip column's online chat group."


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