I’ve been in this racket long enough to see plenty of other websites, podcasts, and commentators come and go.
One of those names from the past is MacSurfer, an old-school link aggregation website keeping up with news from across the Apple ecosystem. Back in the day, getting a link on Macsurfer’s Headline News would mean serious traffic for a younger version of me.
While I first knew about MacSurfer in 2005 or so, I was a decade late; the site started back in 1995 WHEN I WAS JUST NINE YEARS OLD. Sadly, it was shuttered in 2020 due to revenue issues, but weirdly, the site seemed to spring back to life this week. Eric Schwarz was able to chat with its new owner, Ken Turner:
Eric Schwarz: It sounds like you were a fan of the old MacSurfer, what are you hoping to do with its revival?
Ken Turner: I joined Apple as a software engineer in 1997 and my manager told me about MacSurfer in one of our first meetings (really!) I became an almost daily visitor ever since. When it went dormant several years ago, I missed a daily news roundup of everything happening in the Apple world. My hope, partially selfish, is to bring it back to fill that need again.
After reading the entire thing, I’m encouraged that Turner is excited to bring back the site, and I think he has some interesting ideas on how to do it.