MacTalk member check-in thread

In my honest opinion after being on the internet for the best part of 20 years these types of forums are always best off when they are independently operated. As soon as Ben sold Atomic to Haymarket it went to shit, as soon as those with deep money get there hands on good things they turn it into shit. And so I say, it’s not all about the money. It should always be about the community first.

I’ve seen this road before… and to say the least the glue that binds these things as it did at one point for MacWorld and other publications such as Atomic was the community that it created. When you start chasing dollars rather than servicing your community niche (no pun intended) it all tends to go to shit.

I should clarify so this doesn’t sound like a negative rant at the powers that be here. I don’t blame people for getting paid, money has to be made somehow, I jut think these things are best left to fulfill whatever niche it is that they have in the community. Where large sums of money are involved it changes the whole atmosphere of the place.

I had left long ago maybe even before Niche took over, Heard about this place on a news article posted to the front page of MacRumors about Apple Pay I believe.

When you control everything this should be very easy to fix if necessary.

Every now and again I look at Atomic, I used to buy the mag month to month at the news agents before subscribing at about issue 12 through to the end. I still have the CD’s of all the issues up to 100 or whatever it was they released but long since gave away all the hard copies as I ran out of storage space/moved houses. I used to run Trusted Traders thread at one point way back when too :smiley:

There are a surprising number of original users still part of that forum which is still kicking along.

As for MacTalk, I don’t recall seeing anything go down hill quite so fast, I had a poke the other day again and it looks like the only recent posts are SPAM which no one is cleaning up. At this point it should simply be archived and shut down, but sadly it’s likely to just quietly disappear one day :frowning:

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God, I look back there and some of the immature things I said I’d rather move on. I was much younger then, I bought every magazine including the original fold out ones at one point but I’m not sure where they all are now. In a box somewhere. I don’t think I care to listen to another crusty old argument from someone like Leonid though either.

I had fun there once. I actually have a few of them on Facebook now. I don’t think I could go back there even if they wanted me to though with the way I left.

Obviously someone at Niche is,

A. Two stupid or incompetent to know that they should of completed a Change Of Registrant (COR) with their registrar and auDA.

B. Two lazy to complete the initial paperwork and submit the Change Of Registrant (COR) with their registrar and auDA.

Looking into the domain name: mactalk.com.au

MacTalk Media Pty Ltd
ACN 130731172

Has been deregistered since 2014, which means unless they complete a COR there not technically eligible to hold the domain name any longer.

All one needs to do is lodge a complaint with auDA which then would put the onus on Niche to prove ownership. Which could be an issue if the e-mail address listed there doesn’t work.

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Oooooh please someone go on go on :slight_smile:

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I believe Niche expected a much larger return on investment than they actually got, and when the numbers started to slide, they chose to run the site attracting the minimal income from the occasional click-through, survey and ad impression to eventually recover some of the losses. I can’t imagine any other reason they’d continue to allocate hardware, network resources and funds to it in its current state.

In briefly working with Niche, there were individuals there interested in doing something with MacTalk, but considering the amount of work required in revamping it with no guarantee that it would ever turn a profit again, it made little business sense to them to devote any time and energy to it. Those at Niche and those that wanted to save it, myself included, as much as we told ourselves it was doable, we were never on the same page.

Personally, I foresaw a complete knock-down and rebuild in its future, retaining little but the database, and that was a monumental task for two or three staff with perhaps an hour a week for MacTalk and some volunteer members scattered around the country.

Still, I would gladly have made all of that effort if given the chance. MacTalk served such a critical role in developing my enthusiasm for and furthering my experience with computing and technology, and I think it did the same for so many other Australians. Shame Niche didn’t see it the same way.

The guys and girls here could probably claim back the domain at some point in the near future if they wanted it. Honestly though I think Appletalk is a better domain. It doesn’t focus on any one particular platform particularly now that it isn’t all about the Mac.

I remember when MacTalk started off as AppleTalk and got a nasty letter from Apple about using the AppleTalk trademark hence the move to MacTalk.

Seems everything comes full circle. :slight_smile:

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Hopefully that circle wont involve a certain US based company following that same path from the past…

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Lenman74 from Mactalk. I just found this tonight and am blown away by the names and the memories! I stopped visiting Mactalk years and years ago. From recollection there was a change of ownership. Decryption sold to someone. Not sure what happened after that. Would love to know how it died!

Also its great to see some familiar names. Is Brains here? ClockworkOrange? Im sure more names will come back to me.

Cheers!

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Hey folks, I used to be Mechcon on MacTalk. Was so upset when I started to see that thread die down. Anyways I thought I’d chime in, been busy with a various amount of projects, still lovin’ the Apple tech and got the whole lot pretty much (Late 2016 MacBook Pro w/ Touchbar, iPhone 8 Plus 256GB, Apple Watch Series 3 Nike+, Apple TV 4th Gen, Airport Extreme).

I still work as tech support at my workplace and yeah hoping to provide help here of what I know and learn a whole lot more as well!!

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Not surprised what happened to Mactalk. It was clear very early on things changed once it was with new owners. I stopped visiting within months of that happening. Wonder how much loss it cost them.

I still pop in there from time to time to try ferry people here… But it’s gotten more and more dead. Barely anything going on there now.

Such a sad loss, but grateful for this place.

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Discourse is great forum product. Been really tempted to make one for my community… but just don’t want to sink in the time (or money)

Mostly OT…

I worked with Discourse for a client site (project did not go live in the end). It is a little resource heavy (increased cost) and requires some knowledge to set-up (I had trouble a few times and had @tcn33 help me out). I started another project with it, which was also delayed. Have been following the development of http://flarum.org as an option.

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That’s nice too.

As have I but unfortunately haven’t been willing to roll that out on a production site yet.

The good news is if you know what you’re doing you can get that running on standard shared web hosting unlike Discourse which normally requires a VPS or dedicated server.

I can’t believe the new owners of MacTalk literally don’t even try to moderate the site - it’s deader than the zombies on the walking dead. What a waste of a community with a long history.

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Doesn’t surprise me at all since they don’t know how to administer the back end and set that kind of access for their staff let alone their users.

What does surprise me is that the site is still online. They’re paying to host it, they’re paying the traffic costs. I suspect someone’s forgotten it exists and they won’t know until the servers either die completely, or they get audited.