As @halfsmoke has pointed out, Apple didn’t buy Affinity, Canva did. They did buy Pixelmator and we’re yet to see whether this is a a positive or a negative.
On the subject of Macintouch, I always found Ric pretty even minded. The criticism of Apple increased because it was warranted. Apple does some wonderful things - why we’re all here as ‘advanced’ users - but they’ve also done some absolute clangers.
Let’s keep this focused on MacInTouch, not Apple in general.
There are reports of some problems accessing macintouch.com that are probably related to our blocking of 'bots via Cloudflare. I’m looking into it.
In general, macintouch.com has always supported only legitimate and non-abusive human visitors directly accessing the site, not any sort of programmatic access or intermediaries (proxies, VPN, TOR etc.)
For any help diagnosing issues, we need a report in plain text format from
from the computer having access issues.
Ric Ford
P.S. If you access macintouch.com and see a Cloudflare prompt to show you’re a human, that’s correct and legitimate. (Many other sites, including tidbits.com, are showing these now, as they also try to manage attacks and abuses.)
There’s an interesting report from Bleeping Computer about Russia blocking access to Cloudflare-protected websites.
The report also talks about cloud servers outside Russia offering VPN tunnels through Russia’s firewalls, but these same hosting networks are ones we’ve particularly noted for frequently hosting attacks (perhaps also instigated from Russia).
According to reports, the same type of throttling affects other Western internet service providers, including Hetzner (Germany), DigitalOcean (US), and OVH (France).
All I’m getting at macintouch right now is a blank white screen. The “on pause” page doesn’t load if it is still what should be seen. This just started today.
We need some basic info to debug issues like this, in text format usually from:
There’s a new landing page now, with a shout-out to tidbits.com as “an alternative with similar history and values”. The page is protected by Cloudflare and sometimes you’ll get challenged before it appears.
No problems here for awhile now, Ric. (Latest Sequoia/Safari)
Except I keep hoping for Macintouch news…
;~}
I’ve just adjusted a number of Cloudflare settings, which resolved this for at least some people.
Ric, I have truly appreciated MacinTouch over the years. Hope you can figure something out.
Cloudflare seems indispensible to me now for blocking attacks and abuses. (My thanks go to Adam for that critical tip.) Among its other features, Cloudflare also offers blocking of AI bots.
I just checked macintouch via Safari 18.5 (with Private Relay turned on) and got the blank page. I then used View > Reload and Show IP Address. A Cloudflare page appeared briefly saying it was checking to see if I was human, then I got Ric’s page that explains that he needs to take a break. So it looks like Cloudflare is working. I don’t mind reloading to show it my IP address.
I think you are missing my point here.
Ric may well have been correct with many of his points and, like I said, I found it an indispensable site for many years.
However, I still feel that Ric or anyone running a discussion site should act as the umpire or referee and not take sides too strenuously. If he wants to make his personal feelings known, he should use one of the many alternative sites.
Although, on balance, I am still a ‘glass half full’ person regarding Apple, I have complained about much over the years and I don’t disagree with any of the points you raise, except that you are wrong about Infinity, which has not been bought by Apple.
If you’re going to be picking up people for being wrong, you should at least get their name right - it’s Affinity.
It’s also been clarified a couple of times in this thread that Canva bought Affinity whilst Apple bought Pixelmator.
You’ve certainly made your opinions clear here about how you think I should run macintouch.com, but if you ever have anything like specific examples of things that you disagree with or object to, I’ve always been open to constructive, respectful feedback via email (to public at the domain). Obviously, no one can run a website that completely pleases everyone.
Something I highly value about single proprietor/personally managed websites, including TidBITS and MacInTouch of course, is the personal, idiosyncratic point of view in the content.
If I want crowdsourced “reviews”, there are plenty of places for that. If I want a more objective, journalistic tone to articles, there are lots and lots of places for that. But non-influencer created commentary, analysis, and product reviews are becoming scarcer and scarcer. So as long as a small site owner-operator is transparent about their background, preferences, and biases, I willl keep reading.
Hi Ric, good to hear from you. I did make my feelings known to you at the time.
Having just made a donation to your site, as I valued it so much, I was disappointed that when I offered you constructive criticism, your response was to refund my donation. I took that to mean that you were not interested in my views. It was your site and you were going to run it the way you saw fit.
I absolutely respect your right to do that but I still feel that if you run what is effectively a discussion site, that somebody has to referee it, who does not hold strong views. Otherwise it runs the risk of just becoming an echo chamber, like so much of the internet these days. That is why I stopped reading your site.
I still miss it and even now want to thank you for all the years of helpful information I gleaned, before you became disillusioned with Apple and I became disillusioned with you.
James
This struck me a little funny, as I see MacInTouch as exactly the opposite of the Apple fanboy echo chamber. Yes, I’ve become disillusioned with Apple in various ways - as I see some other longtimers have recently - but am still immersed in the ecosystem despite the issues.
Ultimately, it all comes down to “my site, my rules,” and that includes editorial opinions. While that may be most obvious at the level of single-operator sites, it’s true of absolutely every site on the Internet.
It does also come down to “your rules don’t suit me, so I’ll stop reading your site.”