Hawk Wings blogger gets real job!
Tuesday, May 23rd, 2006
I almost don’t believe it myself, but I have scored a proper job, posting about Macs for real money.
APC Magazine, one of Australia’s premier IT titles, has launched a swish, revamped web site 
featuring a number of individually themed blogs. And one of them is mine!
On X Factor , the site’s Apple blog, I’ll be able to get all the non-Mail.app stuff out of my system. There is an X Factor-specific RSS feed .
I have a much wider brief, allowing me to cover “hot new software and hardware, quality freeware and Mac OS X tips and tricks”. I am even allowed to have some opinions. Everything gets done over by a ferocious subeditor, so the quality will be better too.
The site soft-launched today, and you can already find posts there on Gmail tricks with Firefox , a great Take Control book that demystifies running Windows on your Mac with Bootcamp, Q or Parallel Workstation, finding Australian maps to use with Address Book and more.
Of course, it’s exciting for me. But it is also an innovative move in the Australian market.
X Factor is the first substantial and regular commitment to Apple by a mainstream IT publication, which like all the rest is otherwise dominated by Windows and Linux.
I like to think that it is a recognition of Apple’s growing market share and continuing importance as a trend-setter (Check out Mac OS X for a foretaste of Windows Vista, etc, etc). I hope too that it will make a few new friends for Apple as storm troopers from the Dark Side wander into X Factor by mistake.
Best of all, unlike some other offers I’ve had, Hawk Wings is able to continue as usual. This development brings you no relief from the usual torrent of posts about Mail.app, iCal and Address Book and email in general :)
Tags: apc magazine, Apple, Apple Mail, hawkwings, mail.app, personal, windows, X Factor