ack@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Andy J. Williams) (10/27/90)
I got busy so I had to backburner this for a week, but at last, here are
the results in the MacWorld vs. MacUser poll.
MacUser wins by a reasonable margin as the more popular Mac Magazine.
The results:
Votes were on a scale of 1..10.
Magazine Average StDev
-----------------------------
MacUser 6.81 1.90
MacWorld 5.04 1.83
Below are some of the comments I received:
---Erik Reuter <eer36024@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu>
MacUser - has has more in depth reviews and evaluations of hardware
and software. However, lately, these have been getting shorter and more
superficial. The sheer number of ads (with unumbered pages) makes it
extremely difficult to find the page you are looking for. It has an
excellent programming in C column going now.
MacWorld - Mostly worthless except for product information and the occasional
interesting rumor. Many reviews, all completely superficial.
---jmay@UCSD.EDU (John May)
MW Strong on graphics, DTP, Macintosh social issues (rumors,
celebrity interviews, why everyone should love/hate Apple, etc.)
Macuser: Better technical coverage, less preachy, info is more useful
to me than what I find in Macworld.
---sharp@cpsc.ucalgary.ca (Maurice Sharp)
If I had to choose, my vote goes for MacUser. I find MacWorld is
too full of advertising. MacUser also seems to have better test labs
for product reviews. As it is, my yearly subscription fees go to
MacWeek. I pay a few more bucks, but I get a much better magazine, I
get the news while it is still news, and more information.
---carsup@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (Fisher Library support)
I subscribe to MacUser, I read Macworld at the newsagent, buying probably at
most 4 to 5 a year. I also subscribe to australian Macworld, but it is not
the reason I don't subscribe to Macworld since they are really different
except for an article every now and then from the US publication.
---anders@macpost.lu.se
MacUser - Looking for the power-users and admins. Techier than MW!
MacWorld - More in-depth reviews
---Jim Gaynor <gaynor@hpuxa.ircc.ohio-state.edu>
When I was first starting out in the Macintosh world, I much
preferred MacUser, as it is oriented less towards the stodgy business
user and more towards the casual or home user. A "friendlier"
magazine, so to speak. It was chattier, easier to understand, and
didn't throw lots of technical jargon at me.
Four years later, I now prefer MacWorld, because I no longer
need as much of the user-friendly, chatty, gloss that MacUser adds.
MacWorld gives me the more technical info I need and use, and does it
in a more concise fashion. It assumes I know certain things, and have
a certain grasp of technical concepts, and doesn't waste time
spoon-feeding those concepts to me.
So, for the new or timid Macintosh users, I'd recommend MacUser.
For the experienced and/or technically literate Macintosh
users, I'd recommend MacWorld.
Of course, between Usenet's comp.sys.mac.xxx groups, and
MacWEEK (MacLeak?) I end up using the monthlies mostly for reference
as opposed to news. These days, -I'm- the one telling the local
salesfolk about what's new in the Mac community... not the other way
around, as it ought to be. <sigh>
---jcocon@hubcap.clemson.edu (james c oconnor)
MacUser: - the political vomit of Guy K., which is a -5
---Rob Schaeffer <robs@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
But, I wouldn't read one without the other because they give two views
of the same thing. So together they get a 9. I wish they included a
reader service number in their reviews, like Byte magazine does.
---darweesh@zephyrus.crd.ge.com (Michael Darweesh)
Both get a "6" in my book. They're neat, but nothing in them is even
near indespensible as long as I have a link to these BBoards.
---stuart@ihlpa.att.com (Stuart D Ericson)
MacWorld - High-quality fluff. In other words VERY nice pictures, but
low standards for technical content and controversy.
MacUser - good technical content, rather good information, and the
irreverent, maddening (read thought-provoking) Dvorak.
---DWOLFF%eno.prime.com@RELAY.CS.NET
MU Good Quality - Actual opinions (could be controversial), fairly
---Don Gillies <gillies@cs.uiuc.edu>
I think MacUser is MUCH better, but I hate it now. I got a 2-year
subscription from someone, but did not review it 6 months ago. By the
end of two years I was offended by the assault on your senses.
There's so much color and graphics cute icons and garbage that it
tires you out just trying to read 10 pages. Also, there really hasn't
been much progress in the PC industry in the last 3 years, hence, most
PC rags (MacUser, PCWeek, InfoWorld) have become uninteresting to me.
Also, whatever happened to the mice index in MacUser?
---min@cerc.utexas.edu (Hyoung Bok Min)
In my experience, MacWorld tends to give us news faster than MacWorld, for example,
MacWorld reports the news like filing Chapter 11 of Jasmine, Apple's Personal LaserWriter.
faster (one month before the MacUser, though it may be a coincidence).
But there are plenty of good articles in MacUser than MacWorld.
---fleming@cup.portal.com
MacUser - Best single source (although I wouldn't rely on a single source
for ANYTHING)
MacWorld - Nice ads
---Eric Hjelmfelt <hjelmflt@symcom.math.uiuc.edu>
MacUser is by far the better of the two although it is perhaps too
concentrated on the business market.
MacWorld seems to be aimed at the new user. It avoids discussing anything
technical, especially the two subjects the more advanced user wants to see:
hardware and programming.
Both are pretty good at the rate-the-laserprinter articles.
Both are weak at the rate-the-development-environment articles.
---Drako@cup.portal.com
When I first starting receiving MacWorld and MacUser exactly two
years ago, I liked MacWorld better. It seemed to be more polished and
detailed, but after receiving several more issues, my vote changed to MacUser
MacUser - end user oriented with great reviews and informative help
section, etc.
MacWorld - corporate oriented with good reviews aimed at products
which, for the most part, are out of reach of the average user, in
terms of cost and productivity.
I always enjoy reading John Dvoraks column in MacUser for comic
relief. The article is placed brilliantly at the end of the
publication as kind-of-a getting the last word in attitude. But I
also enjoy the end of MacWorld concerning their BestSellers breakdown
I do wish, however, that both magazines would produce a text file of a
complete index of their magazines and upload them quartlerly. That would
save me much time in looking for a past review, etc.
---Evan James Torrie <torrie@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
MacWorld: (Not enough techo stuff for a junkie like me, but interesting
nonetheless... gotten better with State of the Mac etc)
MacUser: (More techo, but it's got poorer production in my view, i.e
their graphs of performance are worse than useless in most
cases)
---boris@world.std.com (Boris Levitin)
I find MacUser more useful, because it is less afraid of "getting technical"
and tends to explain things in a language oriented more towards people who
use the Mac because they like it, and less towards bureaucratic MIS simpletons
(the kind who get excited by Windows 3.0 and find it hard to understand
why Macs are better buys than DOS machines when Macs cost more). I read
both, though, but I read MacUser first and more.
However, as a user interested in *news* and not just reviews, retrospectives
and big-picture analysis (the rightful province of the big monthlies), I
spend a lot more time still with MacWeek. While MacUser/MacWorld are very
good at doing comprehensive 20-page reports that compare, for example,
all hard disks 80MB+ by two dozen different criteria, illustrated with
performance charts and feature tables, their news reporting is dismal. Someone
who reads only the monthlies would hardly have been aware of Apple's upcoming
introduction of three low-cost models; a MacWeek reader would have followed
their progress on the front page of nearly every issue for the last six
months. I guess I read the monthlies because I have to; I read MacWeek because
I enjoy it (as a user and as someone who, even in our kinder, gentler times,
still appreciates good investigative journalism. And who deserves
investigation more than Apple "Back to the Dealer" Computer, Inc.).
---pasek%c10sd3.stpaul.ncr.com@RELAY.CS.NET
MacUser - <Good info on things that the average user
runs into; "Independent" product reviews>
MACWORLD - <Covers "new" things first, but very skimpy
on actual "usage" stuff, reviews seem more
like rewrites of manufacturer's literature>
---bkuo%sal-sun62.usc.edu@usc.edu (Benjamin Kuo)
MacUser: moving downward towards 1
MacWorld: inching up towards 7
Why? MacUser used to be a GREAT magazine, but now suddenly it`s
exec-city--nothing but an executive magazine. Some info, but when they're
reviewing $12,000 systems and saying "it's only moderately expensive"
I say: HA! Right! They also have some inaccuracies in their reviews,
and advice from different people. They've also started to go PC-magazine
-ish (the editor was the editor of PC Magazine in '86, and at least 9
of the writers/contributing editors are former PC folks). Including the
flood of cheap ads...
MacWorld was a "glossy" magazine, full of ads, but they'r getting better
at having a wide variety of articles. They actually seem to be trying to
work at decent reviews.
There is only one good Mac magazine (10): MacWeek!
---hbstrub@UCSD.EDU (Hank Strub)
Both are valuable for their ads, but I find myself getting more out of MacUser
reviews than MacWorld reviews.
---seanc@pro-party.cts.com (Sean Cunningham)
This might seem odd, since I'm an Amiga user, but I prefer MacWorld.
I frequently read both MacWorld and MacUser because I like staying on top of
what's available. Unlike alot of other computer users, I don't like staying
isololated...I use this to my advantage in computer-warring, however childish.
I like to know what I'm talking about.
It also gives me something to bitch about when Mac owners get some neat
feature we don't have yet :')
Anyway, I like MacWorld better mainly because of its format. MacUser looks
too much like PC/Computing for my taste (which I also read)...IOW it looks
more like a clone magazine. On terms of content, I'd have to say that they
come out the same. I like the articles in MacWorld, but I like the
commentaries in MacUser.
Both magazines are chock-full of ads (MacWorld has more I believe), which
leads to fairly thick magazines...but I guess, MacWorld still gets my vote.
---shl!mark@uunet.UU.NET (Mark Batten)
The two magazines are different - one is not necessarily better than
the other. It depends on what you want. I haven't read either for
about 6 months (I read MacWeek weekly, instead), but when I last saw them,
one of the two was very good at providing hard facts and lots of tables in its articles
while the other contained articles which were mostly prose, but had
many pages of capsule summaries at the end. In fact the magazines
complement each other. When I want to research something (say disk drives),
I would recommend reviewing back copies of both. On the other hand,
I don't find I have the time to read either of them regularly.
So I give both an - hmmmmmmm - 6 while MacWeek gets an 8 - it balances both
styles and gives more timely info.
-------
Participants:
Erik Reuter <eer36024@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu>
Ken Henry <khenry@umaxc.weeg.uiowa.edu>
stevew@en.ecn.purdue.edu (Steven L Wootton)
jmay@UCSD.EDU (John May)
rsvp (R. Scott V. Paterson)
andrews@csrd.uiuc.edu (John Andrews)
sharp@cpsc.ucalgary.ca (Maurice Sharp)
David.M.Fisher@mac.dartmouth.edu
Andy.J.Williams@mac.dartmouth.edu
fc156111@seas.gwu.edu (Timothy A. Waire Jr.)
carsup@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (Fisher Library support)
Jim Wright <jwright@cfht.cfht.hawaii.edu>
anders@macpost.lu.se
ae219fl@prism.gatech.edu (Fu-Lin Tsung)
Lennart Saaf <saaf@joker.optics.rochester.edu>
cohill@vtserf.cc.vt.edu (Andrew M. Cohill)
Jim Gaynor <gaynor@hpuxa.ircc.ohio-state.edu>
jcocon@hubcap.clemson.edu (james c oconnor)
Rob Schaeffer <robs@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Clark Quinn <quinn@unix.cis.pitt.edu>
darweesh@zephyrus.crd.ge.com (Michael Darweesh)
stuart@ihlpa.att.com (Stuart D Ericson)
DWOLFF%eno.prime.com@RELAY.CS.NET
Don Gillies <gillies@cs.uiuc.edu>
garp.MIT.EDU!uiucuxc!dad.MENTOR.COM!bruceh@bu.edu (Bruce Holm)
PFR654@CSC.ANU.OZ.AU
sobiloff@acc.stolaf.edu
shl!mark@uunet.UU.NET (Mark Batten)
seanc@pro-party.cts.com (Sean Cunningham)
hbstrub@UCSD.EDU (Hank Strub)
bkuo%sal-sun62.usc.edu@usc.edu (Benjamin Kuo)
pasek%c10sd3.stpaul.ncr.com@RELAY.CS.NET
boris@world.std.com (Boris Levitin)
Evan James Torrie <torrie@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
Drako@cup.portal.com
Eric Hjelmfelt <hjelmflt@symcom.math.uiuc.edu>
fleming@cup.portal.com
min@cerc.utexas.edu (Hyoung Bok Min)
Chris.Lasell@mac.dartmouth.edu
dsndata!tssi!nolan@ssbell.imd.sterling.com
------------
Thanks to everyone who participated!
-Andy
--
+---------------------------- Andy J. Williams '90 ----------------------------+
| User Services Consultant - Kiewit Computation Center - Dartmouth College |
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