The folks on the Mac side of the fence have been heralding the death of the PC for years. But when one of their largest mouthpieces takes a turn (over) for the worst, you have to wonder who’s still drinking the Apple kool-aid. According to our friends over at MEGATechNews, AOL Time Warner has decided to shut down their Apple blog. TUAW says goodbye after over 10 years serving the Apple community. The Unofficial Apple Weblog is one of the casualties in AOL’s latest efforts to cast off its under-performing properties. Now, the term under-performing can mean many things, but in this case, I guess that slice of the Apple pie just isn’t big enough for the suits in corporate.
Also caught in the crossfire is gaming site, Joystiq, who, earlier this week, lost one of their own in a tragic accident. Joystiq was started with AOL’s purchase of Weblogs, Inc. in 2005, around the same time that TUAW was acquired.
The loss of both properties (including the merging of AOL Autos into Autoblog, announced earlier) will result in the un-employment of an estimated 150 staff across the organization’s properties. Whatever is left of TUAW will be sliced up, and rolled into operations with Engadget, injecting more juice into an already Pro-Apple organization. Joystiq, however, will seemingly get the lesser of two evils, and will apparently remain as a separate channel on Engadget, according to TechCrunch. However, The Verge is saying otherwise, telling us that Joystiq will basically rot till someone figures out what to do about it.
It’s pretty clear that no one is safe in this ever-changing media climate. We wish the departing staff of Joystiq and TUAW well, and hope that you all find a home where you talents can be used in the best way possible, doing what you love.
Source(s): MEGATechNews / TechCrunch / The Verge