2014: A year of milestones

It’s been an year of personal milestones, both planned and unexpected. The three big ones so far (there could yet be more; the year isn’t over) all represent significant endings:

The end of MacFixIt. After an evolution from the site I created 18 years ago to its a separate life as a part of CNET, CNET dropped the MacFixIt name last March.

My “retirement” as a Macworld | iWorld speaker. I gave a careeer-retrospective session titled Confessions of an Apple Writer at Macworld | iWorld last March. It is the last time I plan to speak at the conference. Its been a great run. And I plan to continue to attend future conferences. But I felt the time was right for me to call it a day as a speaker.

• The end of Macworld magazine. Macworld is over as a print publication (it will still continue as a website). That was not the shocking news. Rather, it was that IDG simultaneously laid off almost the entire Macworld editorial staff…a group of people that I had happily worked with for years. I had already cut back my own writing for Macworld, but still made occasional contributions. Going forward, I expect to continue to submit stuff from time to time (just posted an article today), but I am not sure for how long.

On the other hand, thanks to Apple, it’s also shaping up as a year of significant beginnings. As I wrote recently, Apple’s hardware division has been on a 2+ year break of sorts. That is now over. With the iPhone 6, the finally officially announced Apple Watch, and more to come — Apple is back on track to make big waves in the technology ocean. I will continue to closely follow these events and comment on them (here and elsewhere) when I have something (hopefully) interesting to say.

Speaking of commenting elsewhere, I am about to pass the 15,000 tweet mark! When I first joined Twitter years ago, I would have never guessed I would become such an active participant. But I have. It’s now my most popular hangout on the Internet. Stop by and say hello sometime.

© Ted Landau 2019