Pardon me for paraphrasing Douglas Adams, but it seemed a most fitting way to begin this announcement.
Over 13,250 hints, written with something in excess of three million words. The internet's smartest and friendliest community of OS X users. An incredibly helpful forum site renowned for its civility and useful answers. A career change. Uncountable articles for Macworld magazine and macworld.com. Two books. Two Geek Cruises. A couple of iWork video training projects. Handfuls of Macworld Expo presentations. Hundreds of people I consider friends (not "Facebook friends," but friends in the truest sense), even though I've only ever met a handful of them in person. Nearly ... ten ... years!
I expected none of the above when I launched macosxhints.com back in November of 2000. At the time, I'd been married for a little over a year, we had no children, and my day job was running the office for a small trade show company in Portland. I was just looking for something to do on the side that might help me learn about OS X. (And wow, my little hobby certainly did that!)
But thanks to some hard work on my part, and to some incredibly good luck -- in timing, in picking the right content management system, in Apple's resurgence -- I was able to experience all of the above for nearly 10 full years.
But now, the time has come for me to move on. As of today, I've begun the process of vacating my well-worn macosxhints.com editor's chair, and departing Macworld for a new adventure (more on that in a bit). Don't worry, though -- the macosxhints.com site isn't going anywhere. Macworld is hard at work on finding my successor, and I'll continue to be involved with the site, running it until that person is onboard and fully trained.
Before I go, though, some thanks are in order...
The first, and biggest, Thank You goes to all of you, the macosxhints.com community. One of my early tag lines for the site was "Your community-built source for OS X hints and information." Now, 10 years on, that's still as true today as it was back then: this is your site, and I feel privileged to have had a hand in its formation and gestation. Everything after that though, has been thanks to you, the readers and hint contributors. Without this incredible user community, macosxhints.com would be languishing in the backwaters of the Internet, or it would have simply vanished years ago.
I must also say a very public Thank You to Macworld, for making much of this possible. Although Macworld purchased the site nearly five years ago, the company clearly understood the value of the readers and the community, and the site has continued to thrive after the acquisition.
The people I work with at Macworld are some of the brightest, hardest-working folks I've ever had the pleasure to (virtually) be around. The amount of effort that goes into the web site every day, and into the magazine every month, is simply amazing. Until arriving here, I had no concept of what it took to put a magazine together. Now that I know more (but still oh so little) about what it takes, I'm even more amazed at the incredible product we put out each month.
To have been able to spend nearly five years as part of this small group was an honor and a privilege. I'm still amazed when I see my name in print each month, wondering how a guy could get so lucky to be working at what he loves doing...and so, you're asking, why leave?
Why indeed...when OS X came out, it was scary, foreign ("Terminal on a Mac?!?!?!"), intimidating, and understood by few. Now it's not only well understood, but its core is driving iPods and iPhones, and soon, iTablets, er, iPads. I don't feel the mission here is done, but it's clearly changed over the years as the OS has matured and become more mainstream. After editing and publishing hints for so many years, it was time to let someone else take the reins and bring a fresh new perspective to the site. It was also time for me to find some new challenges.
Rest assured, though, that macosxhints.com will remain in my bookmarks for years to come, simply because I don't know where else I'd go to find the amazing hints that the community keeps coming up with, year after year. I plan on contributing to the site, too, but from here on, it will be as a member of the community, not as the editor in chief.
So where exactly am I going? For the first time in my working life, I will be without a corporate paycheck -- which is both exciting and scary as heck. I'm joining Peter Maurer to re-launch Many Tricks, the home of a couple of my all-time-fave Mac apps (the irreplaceable Butler and the oh-so-useful Witch).
I'll be handling the business end of the company, including sales and marketing -- so yes, I'll now be on the other side of the fence, sending announcements and review copies of our apps to Macworld and other media outlets. Peter will be focused on coding -- debugging, writing our Next Great Thing, revving existing apps, and so on. We'll be updating many of the current apps and launching some new programs, a few of which may not even run on a Mac (cough, iPad, iPhone, cough).
To wrap it up, the last nine-plus years have been simply amazing, and I wouldn't trade them for anything. But the time has come to let someone else take the editor's seat here, and I'm looking forward to my future challenges in the software business. If you'd like to keep in touch, please do so -- you can find me on Twitter, posting occasionally on my own blog, or on the Many Tricks site.
Signed your humble soon-to-be-ex editor-in-chief;
Rob Griffiths
Over 13,250 hints, written with something in excess of three million words. The internet's smartest and friendliest community of OS X users. An incredibly helpful forum site renowned for its civility and useful answers. A career change. Uncountable articles for Macworld magazine and macworld.com. Two books. Two Geek Cruises. A couple of iWork video training projects. Handfuls of Macworld Expo presentations. Hundreds of people I consider friends (not "Facebook friends," but friends in the truest sense), even though I've only ever met a handful of them in person. Nearly ... ten ... years!
I expected none of the above when I launched macosxhints.com back in November of 2000. At the time, I'd been married for a little over a year, we had no children, and my day job was running the office for a small trade show company in Portland. I was just looking for something to do on the side that might help me learn about OS X. (And wow, my little hobby certainly did that!)
But thanks to some hard work on my part, and to some incredibly good luck -- in timing, in picking the right content management system, in Apple's resurgence -- I was able to experience all of the above for nearly 10 full years.
But now, the time has come for me to move on. As of today, I've begun the process of vacating my well-worn macosxhints.com editor's chair, and departing Macworld for a new adventure (more on that in a bit). Don't worry, though -- the macosxhints.com site isn't going anywhere. Macworld is hard at work on finding my successor, and I'll continue to be involved with the site, running it until that person is onboard and fully trained.
Before I go, though, some thanks are in order...
The first, and biggest, Thank You goes to all of you, the macosxhints.com community. One of my early tag lines for the site was "Your community-built source for OS X hints and information." Now, 10 years on, that's still as true today as it was back then: this is your site, and I feel privileged to have had a hand in its formation and gestation. Everything after that though, has been thanks to you, the readers and hint contributors. Without this incredible user community, macosxhints.com would be languishing in the backwaters of the Internet, or it would have simply vanished years ago.
I must also say a very public Thank You to Macworld, for making much of this possible. Although Macworld purchased the site nearly five years ago, the company clearly understood the value of the readers and the community, and the site has continued to thrive after the acquisition.
The people I work with at Macworld are some of the brightest, hardest-working folks I've ever had the pleasure to (virtually) be around. The amount of effort that goes into the web site every day, and into the magazine every month, is simply amazing. Until arriving here, I had no concept of what it took to put a magazine together. Now that I know more (but still oh so little) about what it takes, I'm even more amazed at the incredible product we put out each month.
To have been able to spend nearly five years as part of this small group was an honor and a privilege. I'm still amazed when I see my name in print each month, wondering how a guy could get so lucky to be working at what he loves doing...and so, you're asking, why leave?
Why indeed...when OS X came out, it was scary, foreign ("Terminal on a Mac?!?!?!"), intimidating, and understood by few. Now it's not only well understood, but its core is driving iPods and iPhones, and soon, iTablets, er, iPads. I don't feel the mission here is done, but it's clearly changed over the years as the OS has matured and become more mainstream. After editing and publishing hints for so many years, it was time to let someone else take the reins and bring a fresh new perspective to the site. It was also time for me to find some new challenges.
Rest assured, though, that macosxhints.com will remain in my bookmarks for years to come, simply because I don't know where else I'd go to find the amazing hints that the community keeps coming up with, year after year. I plan on contributing to the site, too, but from here on, it will be as a member of the community, not as the editor in chief.
So where exactly am I going? For the first time in my working life, I will be without a corporate paycheck -- which is both exciting and scary as heck. I'm joining Peter Maurer to re-launch Many Tricks, the home of a couple of my all-time-fave Mac apps (the irreplaceable Butler and the oh-so-useful Witch).
I'll be handling the business end of the company, including sales and marketing -- so yes, I'll now be on the other side of the fence, sending announcements and review copies of our apps to Macworld and other media outlets. Peter will be focused on coding -- debugging, writing our Next Great Thing, revving existing apps, and so on. We'll be updating many of the current apps and launching some new programs, a few of which may not even run on a Mac (cough, iPad, iPhone, cough).
To wrap it up, the last nine-plus years have been simply amazing, and I wouldn't trade them for anything. But the time has come to let someone else take the editor's seat here, and I'm looking forward to my future challenges in the software business. If you'd like to keep in touch, please do so -- you can find me on Twitter, posting occasionally on my own blog, or on the Many Tricks site.
Signed your humble soon-to-be-ex editor-in-chief;
Rob Griffiths
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