The MacDeskBlog

I should have asked this question years ago, but I’ve always just kind of winged it in the past. I bring it up because I’m processing some November pictures and discovered two original artwork submissions for Halloween. One the one hand, I like to have a Halloween picture up on the site on Halloween (fireworks on 4th of July, etc), but on the other hand, that pretty much limits enjoyment of the picture as a desktop to a single day.

So, I ask you, how early should I post holiday pictures?
a) day of
b) day before
c) up to a week before
d) more than a week before

Feel free to vary your answers by holiday. And honestly, the holidays for which I typically get submissions are only Valentine’s Day, Independence Day, Halloween, and Christmas, though submissions are always welcome for other commemorations.

As a corollary, do you enjoy Fall landscapes during the Spring or Summer? How much should I try to post seasonal pictures within their seasons?

And if you’re paying attention, yes, this does mean that posting of some pictures gets delayed by a full year (or even two back when submissions were heavy) in order to hit their holiday.

I’ve been sitting on some news for a while and I think it’s time to share it. I was notified last month that I’m being laid off from my regular job of the past 16 years. As strange as it may sound, this turns out to be a good thing. My wife and I have been planning for life post-career for quite some time now. Though we’re short of our targets, we’ve decided that we are going to execute on our plans. We are moving out of the country early next month. Once there, I’ll share more details.

Don’t panic.
I will continue to run MacDesktops from our new home, and there will be no break in service during out transition. I am still struggling with the last pieces of the mail server transition, but I’m going to tackle that today (Wednesday) and hope for the best.

I’m sure that you’ve noticed that despite my call for submissions a few months ago, the site has subsisted on pictures from Frank J Sinkavich, Stan Peyton, Timothy M. Urbanek, Victor Hamberlin, NASA, and me since then. Please join me in thanking Frank, Stan, Timothy and Victor for their tremendous contributions to the site. I have been accumulating new submissions during these months. Once we get settled, I’ll increase postings with those new submissions. So please, keep sending them in.

Thank you for your support,
Ryan

Hey everyone,

I’m running quite low on submissions these days. I’m starting to think that MacDesktops may be running down. I am flush with pictures from a few dedicated photographers, but submissions in general are way down. Some of this I blame on Apple’s success. As Macs have become cool once again, and once Apple lost the label of “going out of business for 20 years,” the need for reaffirmation on our computer screens has diminished. Some of the blame I’ll also lay on Apple’s relatively weak print ads over the past few years. The Think Different campaign, the early iMac campaigns, and the late PowerMac/PowerBook campaigns all had a variety of catchy and quirky slogans in them. The stuff is mostly simple marketing speak. But mostly, it falls back on me. I haven’t worked on promoting the site for several years. That’s one of the side effects of keeping the site free with minimal advertising.

So, it looks like I’ll be curbing back to only one new picture on some days, probably starting this week. I’ll post two at time when I can and I will ramp back up to two each day if submissions rise again. I’ll continue to post anime on Mondays and NASA/ESA pictures on Saturdays, and I’ll continue to try to post one Apple picture on Tuesdays or Thursdays (always with a preference toward submitted ones over something I come up with myself).

Thank you to everyone who has been coming for so long, and to those of you finding MacDesktops for the first time.

Ryan

Hey folks. Sorry for the delay on today’s second picture. As I was filling in the gap last night, I found that my mail/etc server at home was having some trouble. As I spent several hours fixing it, I didn’t pay enough attention to my posting and put the snakes up on the wrong day. The server is now working much better, and I fixed the posting date for the snakes. The biggest impact was that the announcements went out several hours late, and I had to send them twice to capture the late posting.

By the way, the submission queue is very short these days. If you would like to share any of your artwork, photographs, humor, or whatnot, please send them in.

Thanks to M. Breez for pointing out a bug in the site. The main page and using the “images from previous week” links should now display seven days of images every time. It was limited to the most recent 14 images which trimmed off an image for 15 picture weeks and displayed less than half of the images for those crazy 30 image weeks back in 2000 (April 5th if that relative link doesn’t jump you back far enough). And if you’re browsing back really far through the archives, you shouldn’t ever receive the same results for previous week searches. You may wonder how that could have happened, so I’ll tell you. If the “images from previous week” search finds no pictures, it checks the prior week for up to 28 days in total. The link was only changing by 7 days even if the search went back 14, 21 or 28 days. So, you could get the same results up to four consecutive times. Now, if the search goes back 28 days, the link will go back 28 days too.

Please let me know if think you find a new bug in this.

Ryan

This morning’s announcement missed one of today’s pictures. I suspect the database backup may have been running at the time, but I’m not certain. The unannounced picture has been up all day. I re-ran the announcements after I got home from work.

MacDesktops is 10 years old today. In 1998, I bought a new 20″ monitor. It was huge. It had a massive 1280×1024 resolution. I searched the web high and low for desktop pictures to fit it, but nobody provided pictures that huge. So, I generated a few desktops and shared them. I was pleasantly surprised that the site generated a couple thousand hits that month, and a few more in May. By June though, interest was trailing off. So, I decided to start posting new pictures weekly. Eventually, weekly became daily. MacDesktops joined MacNN for a couple of years. MacNN’s servers crashed and MacDesktops went offline for a few months. I unhitched from MacNN and relaunched the site independently where it has stayed ever since and weathered two more extended downtimes due to server outages.

In 1998, you’ll notice several Power Computing desktops, as Apple was ending its clone phase. Apple was fighting for survival with market share dwindling below 3%. MacDesktops’ pro-Mac pictures helped bolster the confidence of Mac users under siege. Apple’s combative advertising compared Intel processors to snails and lit the Intel “Bunny Suits” on fire. Apple encouraged everyone to Think Different by buying a Mac. Then came the iPod and iMac, each of which increased Apple’s standing and decreased pressure on Mac users everywhere. Apple had some great advertising campaigns when they returned to Chiat-Day, and they have produced some terrific products since 1998. When the two have converged, MacDesktops has benefitted from the excitement and buzz with tremendous submissions of Apple product desktops.

In 2003, the U.S. invaded Iraq under false pretenses and I took a subtle stance here. This pissed off some people and encouraged others. When I posted Movie picture #146, I pissed off some more people. Such is life. I put a lot of effort into building this little soap box and there are times when I must stand on it and speak rationally to whomever will pause and listen.

During these past ten years, my own interest in the site has waxed and waned several times. Sometimes generating and posting pictures is a joy. At other times, it is a burden. I felt bad for contributors when the submission queue was 8-12 months long. And I feel worried now when it is less than 2 months. I rely more and more upon consistent contributors to fill up the queue when I would like to provide a wider variety of content. My huge 1280×1024 monitor from 1998 is now tiny. Creating original artwork for 30″ Cinema Displays takes more effort than making something for a 15″ monitor. In 1998, digital cameras were expensive while capturing low resolution images. Today, most of the desktops come from inexpensive, high resolution digital cameras.

How has your Mac experience changed over these past ten years?

By request, I upgraded Television, and University and College Campuses from searchable keywords to categories. Of course, the real intent of the request was for more submissions in those categories, as well as more Family Guy, more Cars/Autos, more Logos, more Music, more Humor, and more Multiple Monitor Sets.

Be general. Be specific. Be public. Reply in the blog with your requests. Perhaps you will inspire someone to send in your heart’s desire.

The picture queue is down to two months now. That may sound like a lot, but it’s really quite small. Please keep sending in your beautiful compositions. Photographs are great, and original artwork, product compositions, portraits, movie, animation (all of those non-Flora, non-Landscape categories) are even better. If you send in something which will be less poignant in two months, please remember to add “Time Sensitive” to the subject line.