Volume Number: 25
Issue Number: 11
Column Tag: Editorial

From the Publisher/Editor-in-Chief

Here we are: MacTech's 25th anniversary. As publisher for the past almost 18 years, it's been quite the ride. And, I'm pleased to say that the best days are ahead of us. The magazine has been growing print readers, print advertisers, higher page count and online as well. In fact, in spite of the economy, 2009 has been our best year since the dot-com days. As people realize more and more that reading certain things online is great, other things are better served in print. Unlike a lot of publications, MacTech has already made this transition and is thriving now because of it.

Seems appropriate on the 25th anniversary for a bit of trivia. For those of you that remember the original name of the magazine was MacTech ... well, for a couple of issues at least ... and then it became MacTutor. A year after I took the helm as publisher, the magazine returned to its more appropriate name of MacTech. Did you know that?

We're launching a new series to cover your stories. Those little tidbits that you almost forgot, but were in the making of all that today is the Apple ecosystem. For example, in writing this, I was thinking back to the early days of Macintosh.

In those days, the user interface was a lot less refined, and there weren't the standards that we've become accustomed to. One of my favorites is how command keys evolved. In the beginning, they were all over the map. Sometimes cmd-P was for "Plain Text" and other times it was for "Print." At one point, I authored a letter to Bruce Tognazzini (aka "Tog") that laid out the argument for cmd-P always being for "Print." Tog discussed it others at Apple, and it became the standard. Today, this is so simple, and so obvious, but it's just one of those little stories showing the building blocks of how we got to where we are today.

Many of you have made contributions of your own: some big, and some small. We want to now hear your stories. Just submit them at http://www.mactech.com

We don't say it often enough, but thank you for being our readers and our advertisers. It's our honor to serve you, and we look forward to seeing all the great products and projects you create in the next 25 years.

Neil Ticktin,
Publisher/Editor-in-Chief