MDJ! MDJ! MDJ!

Frequently Asked Questions about MDJ

Why doesn't MDJ publish every weekday?

This has always been a tough call for us. The MDJ Staff is small because writers with as much experience who can write fast and write well are hard to come by. In addition, the Macintosh market has become staggeringly more complex with the advent of technologies like Mac OS X (the descendant of Mac OS, OpenStep, and FreeBSD), super-fast motherboards, and Apple's expanding digital hub strategy. In conversations with readers, we've clearly heard that you prefer in-depth coverage over faster, more shallow issues, and that's what we target.

Hiring enough experienced writers to produce MDJ every weekday would likely double or triple its price (and probably that of MWJ, too), and that would price it out of the reach of smaller businesses, schools, non-profit organizations, and other groups with Macintosh professionals that need extensive information, and we've decided that's not what we want from MDJ. As more and more readers continue to see the quality MDJ offers, we have more resources available to improve it, so if you like MDJ, tell your friends!

Why no advertising?

Refusing advertising makes it clearer that MDJ is not beholden to anyone, and that it is an independent source of news and analysis. We don't have to worry that our ability to deliver MDJ will be jeopardized by speaking the truth about companies that might otherwise be advertisers. If we refer to a program as a "big steaming pile of quality," as we have done at times, we don't have to worry that we're cutting off our income. Since you pay for MDJ, it serves you. When advertisers pay for a journal, it has to serve them.

Where can I find information about subscribing?

Check out our subscription page.

Where can I find information about the no-obligation week free trial?

Check out our free trial page.

I'm not getting the issues I signed up for. Why not?

The two most common reasons that trial issues don't get through are:

You don't have enough room in your mailbox and you signed up for the PDF format. When MDJ includes images, issues can be as large as 1MB, but average issues are around 140K in PDF format. Make sure you have enough room in your mailbox or your server will bounce the issues back to us.
You entered your E-mail address incorrectly. If that's the case, sign up for a trial subscription again. We can figure out what went wrong the first time and grant you another trial.

Can my company get a "site-license" subscription at a discount?

Volume discounts are available on a "number of readers" basis. Please contact us for more information.

Can I subscribe by check?

Yes, check-based subscriptions are available, but not on a monthly basis - checks must be for three to twelve months at a time. Please contact us for more information.

Can I send you a purchase order?

Due to the complexity of responding to purchase orders and our small staff, we can only accept purchase orders for subscriptions larger than US$1000. Since the maximum term we offer is one year, the option is only available to companies or groups purchasing multiple subscriptions for internal distribution. Contact us for more details, or with questions about how we can fit MDJ into your purchasing cycle.

Can I redistribute MDJ?

In general, no. Most publications are happy to have clippings sent around because the publications are either totally free or advertiser supported. MDJ is neither - it's an independent journal not owned by a major corporation that answers only to its subscribers. Therefore, if you duplicate and send entire issues of MDJ to non-subscribers, we could be missing out on a subscription that would support and improve these journals. As noted elsewhere, we keep our costs absolutely as low as possible so we can provide MDJ to you as inexpensively as possible - free from corporate sponsorships or advertising that could color our view of those firms' actions.

Of course, we like to leave this open to your common sense and good intentions; an occasional article or two probably doesn't hurt anything, especially if you're sending it to someone as evidence of why he or she should subscribe (thank you!). But we ask that you use that common sense - please don't perform wholesale redistribution of our journals to people who aren't paying for them and therefore aren't helping us improve them.

Our internal "rule of thumb" is that one subscription is good for about three regular readers, so if you forward it to others on that basis, please make sure they don't forward it further. MDJ has never included any kind of digital rights management or copy-protection technology because we trust readers to do the right thing.

What formats do you offer?

MDJ currently publishes two formats. The PDF version, redesigned in 2002 with OpenType fonts, is a fully-formatted two-column newsletter with text styles and the occasional illustration. The PDF version includes inline hyperlinks in a subtle shade of blue (it's more subtle when printed than on-screen) - click on them to visit the URLs they reference. The setext version is formatted like TidBITS - words surrounded by _underscores_ simulate underlining, and words surrounded by **stars** simulate boldface. Subscribers can choose either or both formats.

I don't like the hyperlinks in the PDF format.

Although Adobe Acrobat has wonderful formatting capabilities, its presentation of links is still limited. There are no roll-overs or other dynamic ways to show you some text is a link -- you can either draw a box around a link or not. Our production tools used to draw a pink box around links to show you where they were. The boxes didn't print, but many people hated them anyway. Starting in 2002, using new tools, links are presented in a bright RGB blue color on-screen without boxes, making them easy to find without cluttering up the text. Most people like the new presentation, once they figure it out (including that the bright blue triangles have the links for items presented "in brief").

Acrobat also offers no built-in way to print hyperlinks embedded in the text. In 1996 and 1997, our journals printed URLs inline with the text: "The MacJournals Web site at <http://www.macjournals.com/>." Unfortunately, many of the URLs we print are long and cryptic. Embedding 150 URLs in visible text each week made the text very hard to read. Our setext edition numbers URLs and references them at the end of each paragraph, but does not word-wrap them. As for PDF, real-world URLs simply do not fit well into a format designed for readability.

What are these files I'm getting from you?

If you request a three-week free trial subscription in Acrobat format, you'll receive files that are stuffed and Binhexed for transmission through E-mail. StuffIt Expander 5 or later from Aladdin Systems can easily turn it back into a readable Acrobat file, if your E-mail client doesn't do this for you. A Windows version is also available, so don't be shy. You must use StuffIt Expander 5 or later; StuffIt Expander 4.5 for Macintosh corrupts PDF files as it expands them in most cases. At some point, MWJ's transmission format may change to something more standard, depending on how much extra bandwidth it would require.

What do I need to view the Acrobat files?

You'll need Acrobat Reader, available free from Adobe Systems, Inc. MWJ takes advantage of compression features available in Acrobat 4.0 and later to reduce transmission time, as well as some formatting features in the PDF 1.3 file format, so you'll need Acrobat Reader 5 or later to read issues of MWJ. At present, Acrobat 6 is not required, but that may change in the future. You need Acrobat Reader 5.1 or later to validate the digital signatures embedded in each issue of MWJ.

What about MDJ in HTML?

Someday, we hope to allow all subscribers to read HTML-formatted issues online after authenticating via user name and password. It has been a long journey as most of our efforts go into preparing the newsletters themselves, but it is still on our list.

What is this "Begin PGP Signed Message" business?

We believe strongly that until problems of digital security are solved, computer network technology will be of limited use in areas such as commerce and communications -- without assurances as to both the security and identity of transactions, those who accept online communications as bona fide are doing so at their own risk.

To put our money where our mouth is, we digitally sign text-only MDJ issues with GCSF, Incorporated's PGP key. Those readers with compatible versions of PGP software can verify the signature against our public key, ensuring that the issues they receive came from us and were not modified in transmission. Some think this is overkill on today's Internet, and they may be right, but we view digital security for issues the same way we view envelopes for US Mail. It's unlikely anyone would read mail that wasn't sealed in an envelope, but we'd rather not take the chance.

PDF versions of MDJ arrive in a StuffIt archive containing the issue and an embedded digital signature. Double-click on the signature icon when using Acrobat Reader 5.1 or later, or Acrobat 5.0 or later, to verify the signature. You can get our Acrobat signing key here to verify that the issue has not been changed. However, you should note that if you have the full Acrobat package and modify the PDF issue in any way (by adding notes or links or other features), the digital signature becomes invalid. You can, however, revert back to the signed version at any time. We have no plans to drop PGP for the setext version.

Before July 2002, PDF issues of MWJ were signed using PGP, and came with an external PGP signature file. Any change to those issue files invalidates the external digital signature.

What fonts does the PDF version use?

As of July 2002, all fonts are embedded in MDJ issues. This increases file size and transmission time, but most people who read the PDF version tell us they value the presentation over saving 50KB to 100KB in E-mail space. The fonts are Adobe's Minion Pro and Myriad Pro OpenType fonts.

Before July 2002, MDJ PDF versions used ITC New Baskerville, Zapf Dingbats and Avant Garde. The first one is Adobe Type Library package #018 and is included free with the Adobe Illustrator CD-ROM product; the second two are part of the standard "PostScript 35" set and are available to most Macintosh users. The text font, ITC New Baskerville Roman, as embedded in each issue, but none of the other fonts were to reduce the size (and transmission time) of each PDF file. When prices are listed in Euros, the font is the free Adobe Euro Serif, and is embedded.

Are back issues available?

We sell CD-ROMs with all back issues on them to subscribers. Contact us for more information. These discs are created irregularly, usually two to three times per year.

What does "MDJ" stand for?

It doesn't stand for anything. The journal's name is just those three letters - "MDJ". They're supposed to be in styled text as in the logo above, but the Web isn't ready for that. It might have been "Macintosh Daily Journal" if that didn't violate Apple's trademark guidelines, but it's not the name. The name is just "MDJ," three simple letters. They're fine, and easier to type, too.

What does "GCSF" stand for?

This one was a mistake - we thought a nice, innocuous, meaningless four-letter abbreviation would avoid all the explanations necessary with company names that are made-up words or other people's names or whatnot. In fact, we've spent just as much time explaining that "GCSF" doesn't stand for anything as we would have if it actually did. But it doesn't. That's why we normally use "MacJournals.com" in materials these days - people know what it means.

How is MDJ distributed?

MDJ is mailed through custom software developed in house by Nathaniel Irons, based on earlier original software from Waterspout Communications. Issued are mailed only once per host and maintain custom bounce tracking headers to help us diagnose problems. MDJ is mailed from a Mac OS X server machine colocated at a local ISP.