Best of the Mac Web Survey #4

October 14-22, 2002

Dan Knight

Welcome to our fourth Best of the Mac Web survey.

We're doing things a bit differently this time.

That last two times, we ran "Rest of the Mac Web" (RotMW) surveys following the "Best of the Mac Web" (BotMW) survey. We created the first "Rest" survey to cover 40-some sites not included on the "Best" survey. We learned that some deserved to be on the "Best" survey, while others didn't.

Last time we split the list down the middle - 50 sites on BotMW; 50 on RotMW. As results of the Rest of the Mac Web survey came in, we saw that there was a lot of overlap. Some sites definitely deserved to move up.

This was compounded by a big difference in the number of votes and range of votes in each survey. The first survey had roughly 4,000 voters with sites ranging from 2,963 (74%) to 373 (9%). The "Rest" had a total of 1,183 votes, and sites ranged from 573 (48%) to 67 (5.7%).

We've decided to address this great discrepancy by creating a single master list of sites and divide it into four groups alphabetically, not by popularity or score. Instead of voting in a single 100 question survey or two 50 question surveys, you can participate in one or more of the 25 question polls.

Once the survey is finished, we'll consolidate the results for all 100 sites into a big spreadsheet, do our analysis, and publish our results.

Changes

The following sites were in the last survey but are not included this time.

  1. Brave New Mac - last update May 6, 2002
  2. The Daily Mac - last update April 11, 2002
  3. The iMac.com - no new content in months
  4. MacMilitia - only 2 updates since May 2002
  5. MacNow - last issue December 2001
  6. MacOSXcentric.com - gone
  7. The Mac Show Live - closed
  8. macXcess - last update October 9, 2001
  9. Pure Mac - last update January 11, 2002
  10. Right On Mac - last update July 19, 2002
  11. Webintosh- last update June 28, 2002

The following sites were added to this survey to bring the count to 100.

  1. AppleAudio
  2. Apple Quicklinks
  3. CoolMac
  4. dotmac.info
  5. iGeek
  6. Joy of Tech
  7. Mac Critic
  8. MacDailyNews
  9. macHome
  10. Mac OS Planet
  11. MacTeens

As always, we ask you to only rate sites you're familiar with and skip sites you're not familiar with. You may well discover some new and useful sites that you'll be visiting regularly.

This survey is far from exhaustive; there are hundreds of Mac-related sites out there. We're covering less than half of the Mac-related sites out there, but we are trying to cover the better known ones. (For more, see Methodology: Best of the Mac Web Survey.) If you think we've missed an important one, email us. We may add it to the next survey, since it's quite likely 8-12 of the sites currently listed won't be active six months from now.

Although it should go without saying, we're only looking at English language sites. If the survey were looking at the best Mac websites in Spanish, Japanese,or German, the name of the survey would be enough to give it away.

We've provided links to each of the sites so you can visit them. However, we again ask that you only rate sites you were familiar with before coming to the survey. If any of the "new to you" sites become personal favorites, you'll have the opportunity to rate them in the next survey. Or if you think you've found a really great new site and want to vote on it, bookmark it, visit it several times, and come back to rate it toward the end of the survey. (Please don't try to stuff the ballot box. One user, one vote.)

We try to contact the publisher or webmaster of each site, giving them an opportunity to link to the survey and have the opinions of their visitors counted. We do this to minimize bias by giving every site a chance to link. However, we were unable to find contact information on several sites, so it's quite likely that we've only reached about 80% with news of the survey prior to lauch.

This is something of a popularity contest, but we're most interested in what you think of the sites you're familiar with. This is an opinion survey, and I believe that it will fairly reflect what a wide spectrum of Mac users think of the listed sites after several thousand votes have been counted.

We have made every effort to insure that these links work and that the sites are both accessible and recently updated. Each site was visited at least twice in the week prior to starting the survey.

The Sites

Here are the sites for the fourth Best of the Mac Web survey (each link will open into a new window, making it easy to come back to this page or to look at a site while taking the survey).

Group A

  1. 3 Macs and a Printer
  2. About This Particular Macintosh
  3. Accelerate Your Mac
  4. AllOSX.com
  5. apple.slashdot.org
  6. AppleAudio
  7. Apple History
  8. Applelinks
  9. Applelust
  10. Apple Museum
  11. Apple Quicklinks
  12. AppleTechs
  13. As the Apple Turns
  14. Bare Feats
  15. Chez Mark
  16. CoolMac
  17. Crazy Apple Rumors
  18. Creative Mac
  19. DealMac
  20. Deals on the Web
  21. dotmac.info
  22. Emulation.net
  23. EveryMac
  24. Family-Mac
  25. IconFactory

Group B

  1. iGeek
  2. The iMac NewsPage
  3. Insanely Great Mac
  4. Inside Mac Games
  5. Jag's House
  6. Joy of Tech
  7. Low End Mac
  8. The Mac 512k
  9. MacAddict
  10. MacCentral
  11. Mac Critic
  12. MacDailyNews
  13. MacDesktops
  14. MacDirectory
  15. MacEdition
  16. Mac Evangelist
  17. MacFixIt
  18. MacGamer
  19. macHome
  20. Macinstein
  21. MacInTouch
  22. MacMerc
  23. The Mac Mind
  24. MacMinute
  25. Mac Monkies

Group C

  1. Mac Net Journal
  2. MacNETv2
  3. Mac Night Owl
  4. MacNN
  5. Mac Observer
  6. MacOpinion
  7. Mac Orchard
  8. Mac OS Planet
  9. MacOS Rumors
  10. Mac OS Zone
  11. MacOSX.com
  12. Mac OS X Hints
  13. Mac Resource Page
  14. MacReviewZone
  15. Mac Rumors
  16. MacSlash
  17. Macs Only!
  18. MacSpeedZone
  19. MacSurfer's Headline News
  20. MacTeens
  21. MacUnlimited.com
  22. MacUpdate
  23. MacUser UK
  24. MacVillage
  25. MacWindows

Group D

  1. Macworld
  2. Macworld UK
  3. MyAppleMenu
  4. MyMac
  5. O'Grady's PowerPage
  6. osOpinion
  7. OS X FAQ
  8. PowerBook Central
  9. PowerBook Source
  10. PowerBook Zone
  11. Railhead Design
  12. ramSeeker
  13. RandomMaccess
  14. ResExcellence
  15. Should Our Schools Have Macs or PCs?
  16. SpyMac
  17. Stepwise
  18. System 6 Heaven
  19. Think Secret
  20. TidBITS
  21. VersionTracker
  22. Why the Mac is so great.com
  23. Working Mac
  24. Your Mac Life

Because we ask voters to only rate sites they are familiar with, the Best of the Mac Web survey measures how well known a site is and what those who know the site think of it. Click below to participate in one or more sub-surveys. Please skip sites you aren't familiar with.

If you want to, you can come back and take any survey a second time. Note that this will wipe out the results of your earlier vote in that group.

We'll be collecting your feedback through Tuesday, October 22, 2002. We'll spend some time analyzing the results and hope to publish our findings no later than Friday, October 25.

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