Killing Your Friends when They Think You're not Looking

Today is the last day for The Unofficial Apple Weblog. TUAW has been a staple in keeping up with the latest Apple news, products and happenings. The site was always a go-to of mine to keep up to date on rumors, and it did its job well.

TUAW, for lots of reasons beyond our control, has no future, but Apple’s burns brightly. It’s been great writing about these growing technologies, and seeing and testing apps — some that were great and some that fell short. All of us here tried to tell the story of Apple and its offspring of hardware and software companies and tell it straight; the good along with the sometimes ugly. — Mel Martin, TUAW

If you’re unsure of what that first sentence means let me translate: “TUAW doesn’t write enough fluff. Engadget and TechCrunch do. AOL wants to keep them because fluff pieces make more ad dollars. Without ad dollars, AOL will we all die.”

I can’t help but think that’s why TUAW and coincidentally, Joystiq are taking their final ride today and heading out to pasture. While the revolution of digital media killed off many a good magazine (read: Macworld, Cat Fancy), having a digital publication that people actually enjoy murdered quietly is tough, too. I’m sure TC and Engadget will have plenty of space for the staff from TUAW and Joystiq, but they’re just not the same. Both are end-all-be-all properties that try to cater to everyone and in turn they lose a sliver of their credibility as being the authority on specific things. I wouldn’t trust my local Wal-Mart with high-nor would I trust Radio Shack, either—and I think it’s hard to put faith into a site that tries to pull in 20-somethings for gadget news and then turn around and write about a concierge sex service. It never ended there, don’t even get me started on why a porn site that really wasn’t that special was newsworthy.

To each their own, I guess. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have iMore, 9to5Mac, and ArsTechnica to go read.