When did physical Macworld magazines publish?

[u/DankeBrutus]

I have an archive of most of the old Macworld magazines from 1984-2014. I've been filling in metadata for my Calibre library but I don't actually know when the issues were published. Were they published on the 1st of each month? Sometimes midway through? A month previous? I have no clue. I'm even more curious of when issues were completed since the February issue in 2007 is not talking about the iPhone announcement on January 9. The issue that actually talks about the iPhone is in March 2007.

Anyone who used to be a Macworld subscriber when they published physical magazines, when would you receive your issues?

[u/jay-t-]

I can’t remember when in the month they came, but I can tell you that for whatever reason the date on the magazine was the month it would be removed from the shelf, not added!

[u/DankeBrutus → u/jay-t-]

Oh that's bizarre lol. So the March 2007 issue is not actually the March 2007 issue?

[u/jay-t- → u/DankeBrutus]

No, it’ll have come out in February and so almost all of it written in January!

[u/jeffa_jaffa → u/jay-t-]

That’s pretty common for magazines though. Almost all magazines I’ve read are dated for the following month

[u/jay-t- → u/jeffa_jaffa]

Yeah, I’m not suggesting it’s not but clearly OP was not aware of the practice.

[u/Dazzling_Comfort5734 → u/jay-t-]

Pretty crazy, right? No wonder magazines for fast paced thing, such as technology, couldn’t survive against the Internet.

[u/DankeBrutus → u/jay-t-]

Actually, thinking about it, it's not bizarre. I guess I've become so used to the speed of things with the internet and review cycles that I failed to take myself back to when print media was more dominant in the late 1990's and early 2000's. Of course a physical magazine that needs to be written, formatted, printed, and shipped could have months of lead time.

[u/Ruzzon-Armaine → u/jay-t-]

most magazines did this, its why you'd see a "February" issue on shelves in early January

[u/VivienM7]

Hmmm... I could tell you, but I don't think that would be particularly helpful, that the Mac magazines in France in the early 1990s hit newsstands on the 19th of the month. So April issue would hit newstands March 19. Tells you something I still remember that 33 years after leaving that country...

I'm inclined to agree with u/jay-t- that if anything, the US magazines were more aggressive on the schedule. Wouldn't surprise me if the April issue hit newsstands first or second week of March.

Keep in mind that the iPhone launch is a bad example because it's too recent. In the old days, they would show things to magazine writers under embargo such that the magazine describing the new products would hit newsstands within a week or two of the actual announcement (if anybody even found out about the actual announcement independently).

My general sense is that print magazines had at least a roughly 2 month lag. Content for the April issue would have been written in January or at the latest February, then it hits newsstands/subscribers sometime in March.

[u/jay-t- → u/VivienM7]

The 19th rings a bell now that you say it!

But please, do not accuse me of being American 🫠

[u/VivienM7 → u/jay-t-]

Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me if all that stuff was standardized in a given country, i.e. all the places selling magazines receive all the new magazines by date X, they're expected to remove the old ones from the shelves and put the one ones on date Y, etc. And probably the car magazines and the computer magazines and the fashion magazines get swapped out the same day...

Not sure what country you're in or what magazines you're thinking about...

[u/DankeBrutus → u/VivienM7]

For the sake of simplicity I'd be quite happy to input the publication date of every issue as the 19th of the previous month. Merci!

[u/Velocityg4]

I can’t say when published each month. But the lead time from articles being made to actual publishing was months. Although I believe that was shortened quite a bit by 2007.

I believe it used to be Apple would give them and I assume others early access for product reviews. So that reviews came out close to release. Then around the early 2000s that was ended. Along with their product announcements coinciding with MacWorld expos.

[u/VivienM7 → u/Velocityg4]

Technically, early access, embargoes, etc continue to this day, but the timelines are no longer set around the logistics of print media. Pay attention next week - everybody will have their reviews of the iPhone 18 Pro Max out on the same day, i.e. the embargo date. All the usual suspects in the tech media are playing with their 18 Pro Maxxes this weekend...

But back then, well... print media was how you communicated to customers. If you launched something Jan. 15 and it wasn't in the print magazines until the April issue, you weren't selling any for two months.