Now that we’ve entered the home stretch of the year, many readers will be receiving TidBITS membership renewal notices in email. If you’re among them, thanks in advance for renewing—we rely on your continued support! If you have trouble, contact Lauri Reinhardt at [email protected] for help. Since TidBITS memberships run on a rolling annual basis, if you don’t get a renewal reminder, it’s likely because you joined at some other time of year. You can check your membership expiration date on your account page; if it’s blank, your membership automatically renews.
Normally, this is where I’d explain the importance of the TidBITS membership program in paying for Josh Centers and regular contributors like Agen Schmitz, Glenn Fleishman, Julio Ojeda-Zapata, and Michael Cohen, along with Web hosting, email distribution, and ongoing maintenance. Most of that is still true, but things are a bit different this year, as you read in “Josh Centers: So Long and Thanks for All the Fish” (14 November 2022).
Josh’s leaving was very much a mutual decision because we both found ourselves looking for a way to get off the news treadmill. For him, that was a new job; for me, it’s the opportunity to experiment with new approaches to content and infrastructure.
To step back briefly, my goal with TidBITS is to help you, the person behind the personal computer, use technology more effectively. When I collaborate with non-technical people, I’m often distressed at how inefficiently they work, their weak tech skills, and their lack of an understanding of how technology intersects with the world. TidBITS will never reach those people, and I can guide only a few personally, but if the tens of thousands of TidBITS readers can help those around them with their technology, the world will become a better place.
So I’m looking for new ways beyond our traditional articles to help you learn and retain more, both to aid you directly in your work and in the hope that you’ll be able to leverage that information and knowledge to raise the overall level of tech fluency of those near you. I honestly don’t know what these initiatives will look like yet, but I’m pondering possibilities that increase information stickiness by being more interactive and engaging. And frankly, I want what we create to be more fun, both for me to create and for you to consume.
All this is by way of explaining why the TidBITS membership program remains essential for funding our operations. The necessary software and development effort won’t be cheap, and additional resources may be required for production and hosting. More prosaically, without Josh, I’ll be doing more writing and will need to farm out more editing to other TidBITS regulars.
So if you aren’t yet part of the TidBITS membership program, would you consider joining the more than 3600 readers who help keep TidBITS running and growing?
A TidBITS membership comes with a few special perks:
Discounts of 15% to 50% on 90+ Mac products worth over $1100 A 30% discount on all Take Control books The option to receive new articles in email as they’re published A full-text RSS feed (non-members get a summary-only feed) A version of the TidBITS Web site free of paid banner ads Optional acknowledgment on our public TidBITS Members page
Be sure to scroll through our Membership Benefits page, which lists all the Mac apps on which members receive discounts. You’ll find essential apps we use and recommend, like 1Password, Audio Hijack, ChronoSync, Default Folder X, DEVONthink, Keyboard Maestro, KeyCue, LaunchBar, Nisus Writer Pro, PopChar X, Scrivener, SpamSieve, TextExpander, and more. (Contact me if you’d like to add your company’s product to the list.)
You can choose from different levels of support—$20, $50, $100, or $1000—or set your own monthly or yearly amount. There’s also a Boost TidBITS button at the bottom of that page if you want to use PayPal or make an extra out-of-cycle donation. The membership perks are the same at each level, with one exception: the $1000 TidBITS Angel level is a lifetime membership that includes dinner with Tonya and me if you’re in Ithaca or we’re in your city. Special thanks to those who joined at the TidBITS Angel level in 2022!
So if you find TidBITS content valuable, want to support our efforts going forward, or have received personal help from one of us simply because you asked, please become a TidBITS member. You’ll have our undying gratitude and can bask in the good feeling that every article you read in 2023 was made possible in part by your generosity. Thank you!