Growing a tad weary of reading the same articles across the major Tech sites. I feel like once I’ve read an article I see the same story across multiple websites with really no new information. I find their pages to be generally distracting with ads (I realize it pays the bills).
I’m at a point now where I want to find some paywalled sources worth the money and stick to just getting most of my daily info there or at least get a bit more perspective on Tech news in general.
Paid Websites that I’m looking at
Macstories - Club Macstories. I actually like Viticci and crew writing and topic coverage. If anyone has comments on their perceived value as a member let me know.
Tidbits - Affordable. Entry level tier would basically pay for itself with some of the app and service discounts that I’ve seen and would actually be interested. Full Text RSS.
Ars Technica - Ars Pro- Also affordable. I’ve been a free member for approaching 15 years. Full Text RSS
Is there any other sources that are decent? Is Daring Fireball premium worth it? Your thoughts on this matter would be greatly appreciated.
I had a subscription to MacStories for a year. It was interesting, but not compelling. The free site is just as useful, IMO. The subscription provided well written articles by very nice people speculating on what Apple is up to, for the most part, without any special insight.
Ditto for Tidbits. I subscribed for a few years, but then realized that Tidbits’ subscription was not giving me any more detailed info than what the general tech press was reporting anyway.
There are plenty of people on this forum who read broadly and care to point out useful information to the rest of us - so in reality this forum is a better news aggregator, of sorts, than anything else.
That’s my fear. The hope is always that writers are “saving” their best work for the premium content but often people just tend to operate a consistent level regardless of whether the content is free or paid.
I’m probably willing to pay 24 bucks a year for a site if it’s clutter free. Ads are beginning to mess with my ADHD’like lack of focus.
I considered buying YouTube premium to go ad free but sadly the trend with the more popular you tubers is to start shilling like crazy when they start getting sponsors. Here…people discuss things in a relatively balanced manner but lately YouTube reviews have are the review version of…
Let me not forget Dave Sparks. Might have to check him out more. I have a lot of learning to do.
Couple of thoughts from my side… I have subscribed to MacStories for a while now and to Ars very recently. And I‘m very satisfied with both of them, however due to different reasons. Regarding Macstories I‘m looking forward to the newsletter every week and I think it‘s great to have some interesting content for the weekend. Sure, there are stronger and weaker weeks but in general it is quite solid. I regularly get new ideas and insights from it.
Ars on the other hand, is an absolute favorite of mine due to its mix of tech and humanities (I personally have a background in social science which might explain my enthusiasm). I read it in Reeder and to have a full content rss feed makes a real different to me. Of course, it is only one swipe to get from the preview to Ars‘ site in Reeder but still… I just enjoy the reading experience more when I don‘t have to do it. This in combination with the ability to easily save articles as PDF for my own archive justifies the 24 bucks a year for me personally. Hope this helps.
Thanks for this response. I’ve been a long time Ars free user and have wanted to support them in a more sufficient manner. I think they’re a given. MacStories may get the nod because they have such good content on automation through shortcuts and more. I’m not used to Full Text RSS and I’m pretty sure I’ll get hooked on being able to stay within the RSS app.
It’s kind of surprising there’s not more sites but “FREE” is hard to beat for a lot of people.
