36 Years and 1800 Issues of TidBITS

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Originally published at: 36 Years and 1800 Issues of TidBITS - TidBITS

As of this issue, TidBITS is celebrating 36 years of continuous publication, and amusingly, our sequential issue numbering simultaneously hit an even 1800. The human brain does so love numerical coincidence.

Whenever one of these anniversaries rolls around, I look back at what I’ve written in previous years to make sure whatever I say won’t repeat the same point. What I said about modeling the behavior you would like to see in the world in “Staying the Course After 35 Years of TidBITS” (18 April 2025) still holds. “34 Years of TidBITS and New Mac App Discounts for Members” (15 April 2024) was more of a numerical checkpoint, but its focus on the growth and importance of TidBITS Talk remains relevant. And while I have refined my thinking about AI since I wrote “33 Years of TidBITS: Handcrafted Content from Humans” (17 April 2023), I still can’t imagine how an AI could write from lived experience, as I did in my article about using AirPlay to find a dead mouse under our laundry room counter (see “Hunting for a Dead Mouse: AirPlay Receiver to the Rescue,” 6 February 2023).

While those thoughts from anniversary articles past continue to bounce around in my head, I’ve been focusing more on the importance of community of late, as I wrote in “What Apple’s 50th Anniversary Misses” (1 April 2026). I don’t have a lot more to say on that topic right now, other than to suggest that the world as we know it would like it to be is less directly threatened by AI, nuclear weapons, or even climate change than by people and what they choose to do or neglect. One thing that sets humans apart from all other living organisms is our capability to band together—for good or ill—in many different groups across space and time. So I encourage everyone reading this to think about what communities you participate in, how they make the world a better place, and what you can do to help them thrive.

Since you’re here, TidBITS is presumably one of those communities, so I have two small requests. First, one indication of a community’s strength is how long its members stay connected. I’d appreciate it if you could take this quick poll that asks when you started reading TidBITS. (Accuracy isn’t that important, so don’t stress if you can’t remember if it was 1993 or 1994, for instance.)

Second, if you have a story about how something you read in TidBITS or TidBITS Talk helped you out in a big way or made a significant impact on your life, please share it in the comments. Often, the impact of a community on an individual is visible only to that person, so the overall value becomes apparent only when people share how they’ve benefited.

Finally, I’d like to thank the 3472 TidBITS members for their financial support, which makes our work sustainable. If you value what we do and aren’t yet a member, we would welcome your support.

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Not only even, but 1800 = 36 * 50. :exploding_head:

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Good Grief! I’d have to dust off some old Macs to find out when I found out about, and started reading TidBITS! Loooong Ago! I know as an Apple Store Specialist in 2009 I was even then heartily recommending y’all from years of experience, and was aware of your Internet Starter Kit ever further back. Possibly in the ‘90s, when I was active in HMAUS, Hawaii Mac-Apple UG, I was maybe… a subscriber to a TidBITS mailing list?

There are So Many Ways and Times other TBTers have helped! So many that I set aside my usual ‘I hate subscriptions’ policy and make an annual contribution to TB (which maybe doesn’t count as subscription).

It’s just… Golly it sounds so sappy but ‘back in the day’ I used to feel a commonality with other Mac users and UGroup members, and that faded away, and now although I sometimes post here at TBT too verbosely or frivolously, I still feel like my posts-comments are ok/acceptable/sometimes helpful, and as I am an idealistic, helpful person by nature, it is comforting to feel valued… So Thank Y’all at TidBITS HQ and TBT community, you’ve helped make my computing life immeasurably better.

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Yeah, I noticed that too but wasn’t sure what to say about it. We regularly publish 48 issues per year now, but in the past we’ve had extra issues for April Fools and, farther back, when we had issues that needed to be longer than 30K (which used to be a hard limit). So that’s why we’re able to average 50.

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Steady as she goes @ace…

I think it was 91, I had moved to the States and was setting up design studios. It was invaluable. I was using the Mac a few years at that point but my reading and research was almost entirely magazines from Byte to Amiga World up until then. In America, when I transitioned online to US services which were now a local call away… that’s when I clearly recall subscribing to TidBITs in those early days in New York.

Never had a bad experience here, that’s saying something.

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I can’t remember the exact year I first started reading TidBits but it was in the early '90s.

I remember reading about the Internet Starter Kit for Macintosh (1st Edition, 1994) in the weekly TidBits so it predated that. I also learned about The Word Book for Macintosh Users—Make Microsoft Word 5.1 Work For You by Tonya Engst. That book was very useful as I was trying to write my dissertation using Word 5.1a.

I did not join TidBits Talk until much later – when Ric Ford shut down the user forums at MacInTouch.

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I know that I subscribed to TidBITS HTML Announcements in 2006. But I really started participating in the community in 2021 after Ric Ford shut down the user forums at MacInTouch. I’m just glad that @ace welcomes refugees.

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I, too, came here when MacInTouch became a blog. I think I waited for a while before registering. In any case, I value all of the accumulated knowledge that is available here, the massive amount of effort Adam puts into active moderation that keeps TBT focused, friendly, and relevant, and the range of user experience, from “I just want to use it” to “I like to code and use the command line”.

That’s why I made a donation for the first time a few months ago. The year end appeal for memberships and donations made me realize I should be helping to sustain TB/TBT!

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I remember reading the hypercard stacks, which were kind of fun. Then I remember using a primitive text-formatting program to read the emails was used for many years. I have to say there was never any ONE big thing that TidBits did for me. It was more that I had a need for info that just. kept. coming. Year after year. I was a graphic designer, got my first Mac (Quadra!) in 1991, and I sent out the first fully electronic print job to a St. Louis printer - from floppy to film. Without all the many years of crucial information on every aspect of the Mac, networking, and the internet, I wouldn’t have had a job all through the 90s. The Internet Starter Kit must have been where it all started, back in 91. I had a friend who knew somebody at a local university, and he showed me Mosaic. It’s been a long time. I still turn to you guys when weird stuff happens. Until I remember to simply zap the PRAM, restart the beast, and repair my permissions, and, and, what century is this now?

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To answer that poll, I had to fire up my G4 (Panther) to get at my Eudora email archive. It shows that I subscribed to TidBITS Talk on April 21, 1998. So I answered your poll with “1998.” BTW, that G4 is not my oldest working machine.

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I lost my Eudora files prior to 2006, but I know I’ve been around longer than that. Here is the earliest issue I still have.

TidBITS#811/09-Jan-06

After a much-needed holiday hibernation, we’re back and ready
for the busy week ahead of us at Macworld Expo (be sure to check
the ExtraBITS Web page to stay current on what’s announced!).
While in San Francisco, we may wish that we had a Garmin iQue 3600
GPS device, which Travis Butler reviews in this issue. Also this
week, Geoff Duncan eulogizes the late Microsoft Internet Explorer
for the Mac, and we note the releases of History Hound 1.9 and two
new AirPort firmware updates, as well as a program to exchange CDs
for an iPod.

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The earliest message in my Tidbits-Talk archive dates from August 1999. So I must have been reading the publication by that time.

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I can remember sitting in my classroom, reading email on my iMac somewhere around 1996 or 7 when I got a email from a friend telling me about Tidbits. I replied that I had already been subscribing to it for several years. The Tech help in the school was not too good - one guy for many classrooms and teachers with a variety of technical abilities. I eagerly read the issues to learn as much as I could, and continue to do the same. I have donated for a number of years now, as I find it a valuable resource.

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I forgot to mention that I briefly met you, Adam, at one of the MacWorld shows. It was one in Boston, or perhaps one in San Fransisco some years later.

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I really can’t remember when I subscribed. All I know is it seems like this newsletter (and the Take Control books) have always been a trusted source. Congratulations, thanks for all the great issues, looking forward to a lot more.

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It was in the early 90s. From tidbits I learned to buy Mac related things from Siberian Outpost where I bought my copy of Eudora, that I had to return because they initially sent me the windows version

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Ahh … When ‘Decluttering’ the other day I came across a box of floppy disks with labels like “Hypercard Stacks #9 - #14” - full of memories I had no way of accessing anymore. My first Mac, an SE30, I had to import myself as it was only just released in the US, they were not yet available in New Zealand. (I bought it from ‘Kiwi Computers’ in LA, thinking they had a NZ connection, but they didn’t at all.) WAUG (the Wellington Apple Users Group) was a big help in those days and pointed me to TidBits. It’s been a wonderful 36 years - thank you Adam and Tonya!

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I responded to the survey by guessing I started reading TidBITS in 1992, because I thought it was a long time back and couldn’t find any records. However, later I dug back into a file of articles I have written and found that in 1999 I reviewed FAXstf for TidBits. I think I wrote that shortly after discovering TidBITS. FAXstf was an app supposed to let you send send faxes from your computer and a regular modem rather than through a fax machine. It was a good idea but at the time I was writing faxing overseas a lot and FAXsft did not handle international calling codes well. I think that’s when Adam sent me the TidBITS mug I often use for tea.

Of late, Adam’s articles and the members of the TidBITS community have become my primary source of Mac-related news and solutions to the increasing number of computing problems that I keep cropping up as I grow older. Thanks, all.

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I’ve been an admirer of TidBITS since 2003 when TidBITS Publishing, Take Control eBooks specifically, was a client of a company I worked for at the time. I wasn’t drawn in by the Take Control publications or by the TidBITS weekly newsletter, but by Tonya and Adam and their style. They were kind, down to earth, easy going and they treated their customers like royalty. (And they still do!) They were my kind of people! They had the most loyal client base of any company I had ever worked with. (And they still do!)

I began working with TidBITS directly in 2012 and between then and now there have been many changes to TidBITS the company, to Apple products and software, and to the world in general. But a couple of things remain the same:

I continue to be awed by the TidBITS readers and members and their generosity in sharing information in a constructive and genuine way, and for supporting Adam in his mission to create meaningful and interesting content about all things Apple. A cooler bunch of folks you will never find! Over the years, I have corresponded with TidBITS readers from all over the world and I feel comfortable and proud calling them friends.

And Adam, he is still kind, down to earth, and easy going and he continues to value his readers and members. And he writes a pretty mean newsletter each week, too, and as long as he continues to write it, I will continue to read it and value it! Cheers to another anniversary, Adam!

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I’m having trouble remembering when I first started reading tidBits. Early nineties for sure. I was a teacher back then, borrowing the school Mac SE’s. I remember our library guy was our tech guy and he included TidBits text files on the floppy disks. No idea how he got them, probably by email, but in those days most of us didn’t have network connections or email accounts yet. There was nothing like ethernet, nothing like wifi, just floppy disks we passed around. I was a HyperCard enthusiast and bought my first Mac Classic in 1992(?). Do I remember TidBits in HyperCard stacks? Was that a thing? About half a lifetime ago, memory fades.

I can’t even begin to list all the ways tidBits has helped me over the years. Finding out about software, like 1Password, or Carbon Copy Cloner and dozens of others over the years that I can’t think of right now, that enhanced my computer life. The “Take Control” books, the tips and tricks, the security warnings, the recommendations for the timing of OS upgrades, all have made a difference in my life. I can’t thank you enough for the work you have done on this publication.

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