Yes, been following TidBITS since 1991 – loved the choice of name, witty, being the (was it?) fifth disk in the System 7 installer set.
At that time was responsible for the Macs in offices in three different cities in Japan – TidBITS saved me over & over.
Adam, Tania & co. – don’t ever ever cease to publish. 2nd zine on the net? No! The first! CONGRATULATIONS ON 30 YEARS!! OMEDETO!!
Congratulations and thank you for an extremely informative and welcomed site!
Oh man, good memory! But TidBITS pre-dates System 7 its Tidbits disk by a good bit, since we covered its release in TidBITS #61. We always intended the name to be basically what the word means—initially we were planning on much shorter pieces. The unusual capitalization is a direct nod to NeXT, however.
Adam, yes, the date made me think you’d anticipated Apple! TidBITS 1990, System 7 in '91.
That’s why I was attempting to be ambiguous :-)
Not the only time TidBITS has beaten Apple to the punch — but quite a significant one!
Bill
Now if only Apple had capitalized the System 7 disk’s name properly. 
Congratulations on thirty wonderful years, Adam and crew. I remember reading the HyperCard version and helping distribute the text version via LISTSERV in the early years. I was just looking for one of my copies of Internet Starter Kit to scan it and reminisce, but they seem to be in storage these days.
–Mark W.
Congratulations! Thanks to all TidBITS authors over the years.
My readership started with the Internet Starter Kit for Macintosh third edition. It came with two floppy disks if I remember correctly. Must have been 25 years ago. How time flies.
They wouldn’t have known very much of you back then — probably afraid of a cease and desist :-)
Adam, seriously, TidBITS’ longevity is a credit to all of you — I know you’re upstate, but you’re working from the center of this terrible thing at the moment — TidBITS as ever a beacon!
Thank you all so much!
Bill
And for those who don’t know, Mark was a HUGE help back in the day (early 1990s?) with distributing TidBITS via the LISTSERV he ran at Rice University. It’s safe to say that we might not be here today without him.
Back in the day the HyperCard stack was too much of a hassle for me… The Macs in the lab where I worked weren’t connected to the outside world yet, and we had only one computer that was connected to a mainframe and that one allowed us to get things off BITNET and ListServs. There I could read TidBITS in text, and it taught me a lot! So Happy Birthday and thanks very much!
Congratulations on 30 years of keeping us updated on all things Apple. I started with a Mac in 1985 and have been reading Tidbits from the early days. Thanks for a wonderful run.
And congratulations and a huge thank you from me too. My path has been the same as Frans - ISKM got me online in early 1995 and I’ve been benefiting from TidBITS and TidBITS Talk ever since. I mostly lurk rather than participate but greatly appreciate everything I learn.
Peter T.
We bought a Mac back in the 80’s as much for our teenage son as ourselves thinking it would lead to exciting things for all of us. Little did we anticipate that he (and Tonya) would start Tidbits and help others with computers for 30 years. I still enjoy Tidbits every week, even though most of it is beyond me and I have an IT guy in the family to solve all our difficult computer problems.
Thanks son (and Tonya and writers)
Chris Engst
Belated best wishes to you and all of the TidBITS crew, my friend. I remember the HyperCard versions, and then there was an unusual semi-enhanced text format in there for a while, wasn’t there? I’m pretty sure I remember downloading them from CompuServe with that old CompuServe Navigator (pre-Netscape Navigator) You all have provided so much information, enlightenment, and entertainment over the years.
As far as celebrating during the coronavirus crisis, these are the times in which we really need to celebrate and share the good things, and the funny things. In that vein, the other night I could not get my darn TV setup to open the Netflix app on the cable box (Comcast recently added that). Turns out I was saying “Netscape” instead of “Netflix”… sigh. Well, one of the good things about getting old is that you find so many “new” things around the house!
Take care, Adam. Sincere congratulations.
I’ve been riding along all these thirty years as well. Despite, indeed, Pandemic, I still feel young, and Tidbits has been a partner in my private “personal Administration work” for my 20 “linked-in anniversary” years. I remember meeting Adam at a Macworld in Boston, and being impressed then. I was at MIT implementing Laser Cartridge and Paper Recycling for my building among many diverse things as well- ( i also met Don from Small Dog too right afterward…) Thanks Engsts! for always being Ace! Continued success !
That was setext: a STructured Text format developed by Ian Feldman. Adam explains it all for TidBITS 100 in 1992. I first encountered setext in the Info-Mac Digest which predated TidBITS.
Indeed! setext was in many ways a precursor to Markdown, and a properly formatted setext files is parseable by a Markdown parser.
I’ve completely lost touch with Ian Feldman—haven’t heard from him in decades—but I still hear from Akif Eyler, who wrote the EasyView setext viewer, every now and then.
Congratulations and thanks from the UK to Adam, Tonya and everyone who has made TidBITS such a fantastic resource over the years. I’m not sure how far back I go, but I guess it was System 7. I hope we’re not all growing old together…
Thank you so much, Engsts, for 30 years of fabulous information sharing! I got my first Mac in 1985. I first read TidBits around 1993 when, as a librarian at UCLA, I was a Mac user in a sea of PCs. Needless to say, I had no organizational support, and had to learn DOS commands. A GUI had that beat all hollow! I’ve owned 3 or 4 Mac desktops over the years, and am on my 4th laptop. Also iPhone, iPod and iPad. Showing my age a little, ha ha! I just renewed my membership (remember how many years it was free? Astonishing, actually.). Thanks again! Louise Ratliff, Sylmar, CA
I remember BITNET! At UCLA. I was told it was the “Because It’s Time” Network.
