TidBITS 2019 Reader Survey Results
I always approach analyzing our surveys with some level of trepidation, since there’s nothing like asking tens of thousands of people what they think of your work to trigger latent insecurities. Happily, the results of the TidBITS 2019 Reader Survey proved largely positive and helpful (for a link to the full question set, see “Please Vote in the TidBITS 2019 Reader Survey!,” 16 August 2019). I was sad that this year’s survey attracted only 1094 responses, less than half of the 2267 people who responded to our last survey four years ago (see “TidBITS 2015 Reader Survey Results,” 7 December 2015).
We’re well aware that this sort of survey is far from scientific because respondents were self-selected. However, since 56% of respondents were TidBITS members who provide the bulk of our financial support, I’m happy to take guidance from this subset of our readership. (I may use “TidBITS readers” as a shorthand for “survey respondents” below; I’m aware the two groups aren’t identical, but that’s how we’re going to think about it, regardless. People who vote get more say in the future.)
About You
Our first few questions were designed to learn more about our readership so we could be sure we have the right targets in mind when developing articles. Unsurprisingly, given that we’ve been publishing TidBITS for 29 years and have many loyal readers who have stuck with us for decades, we’re all getting older (and wiser, of course). 90% of respondents are over 50, and since Tonya and I turn 52 shortly, we’re right in that demographic.
Some might say we should be trying to attract younger readers, but from watching our son Tristan and his friends, it seems unlikely that we’d be able to succeed at that. We don’t think the way younger generations do, and they neither consider reading to be a primary way to learn nor have much media brand loyalty. They tend to solve problems as they crop up, watching videos or cherry-picking articles from Google search results, rather than subscribing to a periodical. So be it—TidBITS doesn’t have to live forever, and we’re primarily interested in meeting the needs of the TidBITS members who keep us in business.
I was intrigued to see the results of our question about technical proficiency, which had a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 was “I’m a novice or often have trouble using my Apple devices” and 5 was “I solve problems with Apple devices for everyone around me.” Most of you—85%—are above average, with answers of 4 or 5. Only 13% of respondents picked 3 on the scale, and just a few people admitted to being less technical. These results are good, since they tell me that we can continue to assume that TidBITS readers are quite technical when deciding how detailed an article should be.
Internet Infrastructure
It’s clear that our most engaged readers, the ones who responded to this survey, see TidBITS as an email newsletter, with 79% saying that it was one of the ways they read our articles. (These numbers total more than 100% because people could read TidBITS in multiple channels.) Only 31% of respondents use our Web site, and after that, the numbers drop off even further, although the fact that 14% see TidBITS in Apple News was heartening. These numbers were virtually unchanged from 2015.
Speaking of our Web site, which we radically redesigned in April 2018, the overall ratings were pretty good, with 72% of respondents rating it as 4 or 5 on a 1–5 scale, where 1 was “Don’t like it” and 5 was “Love it.”
In the freeform responses, the most common adjective that people used to describe it was “easy” followed by “clean” (and yes, I checked to make sure there weren’t negatives in front of those words). Although a few people said they preferred our old site, there were equal numbers of people saying how much they disliked the old site and were happy we redesigned it. Can’t please all of the people all of the time.
I was a little taken aback to see so many comments that essentially said “I never/rarely use it” and even “I didn’t realize you had a Web site.” Although we publish almost everything in email, if you go to our Web site, you can read the comments that often provide additional information and commentary that expands on the article, and we even sometimes post comments on older articles with updates on the product or service discussed.
The site also provides a 29-year archive of past articles, many of which remain useful today. (In response to a comment in TidBITS Talk, for instance, I just posted a link to “Put Save As Back on the File Menu,” 30 November 2015.) To find those, you can use the site’s internal search capabilities, as about 37% of readers do, or follow the lead of another 6% of readers and target a Google search to our site by adding +site:tidbits.com to your search phrase. However, since 53% of people copped to rarely searching for old articles, I can only assume most of you aren’t interested in going back in time. You can also browse through back issues, if you missed one in email.
The design of our email issue was even better received than the Web design, with 82% of people rating it at 4 or 5 on the 1 “Don’t like it” to 5 “Love it” scale.
Many of the free-form comments again came down equally on opposite sides of the same topic, such as “Like the summary up front” and “I don’t think the summary at the top is necessary.” Can’t please all the people… A number of comments strayed into tech support territory, and I hope to collect and address those in a separate article.
Two categories of comment deserve an immediate response, however. First, quite a few people expressed annoyance that the links in the table of contents at the top of each email issue often don’t work. It’s true, but it’s not our fault! Blame Apple and other email developers, because our design has properly formed named anchors. Apple has ignored this problem in iOS for years—I first reported it in “Mail in El Capitan and iOS 9 Ignores Named Anchors” (5 January 2016). Although Apple closed my bug as a duplicate long ago with no commentary, the company did fix the problem in Mail for the Mac at some point. I’ve confirmed that iOS 13 still suffers from the bug, and I’ve reported it again. If you’re using the iOS 13 beta, please pile on and report it with the Feedback Assistant app.
Second, many people also commented on an annoyance with Gmail’s native Web interface. If a message contains more than 102 KB of text, Gmail puts a message at the bottom that says “[Message clipped] View entire message.” Clicking the “View entire message” link works fine, but is a frustrating extra step, since you have to then scroll down to where you left off reading. The problem is that the 102 KB limit includes the necessary HTML markup, and HTML email requires inefficient table-based coding and inline CSS. It’s only loosely related to the amount of readable text in the issue and is difficult to avoid. (Cornell University’s monthly newsletter for alumni and parents regularly exceeds 102 KB with just a few screens of text and graphics.)
Despite these irritations, only 30% of you said that you’d prefer a short, summary-only version of the issue with links to each article on our Web site. Such a version would require a fair amount of development effort and would both complicate our subscription interface and increase our support load. I’ll put it on our development wishlist but can’t promise if or when it will happen.
Current Content
When it comes to your opinions about what we’re writing, we were pleased to discover that our instincts were largely accurate, with two notable exceptions. Since we allowed everyone to rate each category on a scale from 1 to 5, we calculated weighted averages to compare the categories.
When it came to which products you want to read about, the Mac reigns supreme, as always. Moreover, as anyone would predict, the iPhone and iPad were close behind. The Apple TV garnered much less interest, with the Apple Watch at a similar level. We didn’t expect the AirPods and HomePod to be all that popular, and they weren’t, but they don’t need much coverage.
Interestingly, we asked the same question in 2015, and the Mac dropped 0.06 points, the iPhone rose 0.24, the iPad went up by 0.13, the Apple TV dropped by 0.24, and the Apple Watch rocketed up by 0.49. That makes sense—as iOS devices become ever more flexible and powerful, I can see them becoming more compelling at the slight expense of the Mac. The fourth-generation Apple TV and original Apple Watch shipped in the months before the last survey, and I think it’s fair to say that the Apple TV has not lived up to its promise, whereas the Apple Watch has exceeded its.
To make sense of all the different topics and types of articles we asked you to vote on, I’ve grouped them into four tiers. These are a little arbitrary, but they give us a way to evaluate any given article idea by the tier into which it would fall.
- Tier 1: These six categories were the most popular, with Troubleshooting & Maintenance far and away the winner with a 4.30 weighted average. I was a little distressed that Security & Privacy was second, purely because I wish we didn’t live in a world where it warrants such importance. The third-place ranking of News & Analysis was good, since we feel that we can’t ignore major news items. The final three—Hardware/Accessory Reviews, Mac App Reviews, and Practical How-To—are all utterly worthwhile, and we’ll continue to prioritize them.
- Tier 2: It didn’t surprise us one bit that the first category in this tier, TidBITS Watchlist, ranked so highly. People really like Agen Schmitz’s short descriptions of Mac app updates. The remaining three—Internet Services, iOS App Reviews, and Apple Automation—seemed to fit well as Tier 2 content. They’re appealing but not quite as core to the TidBITS reading experience.
- Tier 3: I’m less sure how to interpret the votes that filled this tier with ExtraBITS, Tech & Politics, Reader Favorite App Surveys, and Opinion. We spend a large amount of time researching and posting ExtraBITS summaries of external articles because it feels like they give TidBITS breadth each week. We may not be able to cover every interesting industry development in depth, but we consider it a service to point you to coverage elsewhere. Perhaps that time would be better spent on short Tier 1 articles. I can see Tech & Politics and Opinion ranking lower because, well, the Internet is way too full of both. We’ll try to restrict ourselves to those that feel the most important. Finally, the low ranking of Reader Favorite App Surveys surprised me. Those articles, where we rank apps in a particular category with crowd-sourced opinions, are quite a lot of work, but we previously thought they were more popular.
- Tier 4: The relatively low ranking of the IT/Enterprise category came as no surprise; most people simply don’t do that kind of work. Nor were we surprised by you being relatively uninterested in articles about Terminal. But the last two? Ouch! Home Automation and Entertainment were by far the lowest-ranked categories. We’ve focused quite a bit of coverage on both due to Apple’s HomeKit platform and forthcoming Apple TV+ and Apple Arcade platforms. Clearly, we’ll have to pull back on such coverage.
Finally, when we asked about doing more of the super-short surveys we’ve put at the end of some articles, the reaction was generally positive, with 66% of people saying that they’d like to see more. As we publish articles, we’ll ponder if a survey makes sense.
Article Details
When it comes to individual articles, we were pleased to hear that roughly 90% of respondents think that TidBITS articles are “just right” when it comes to length, depth, and technical level. Those who disagreed were split about evenly between the alternatives. At most, we’ll try to make articles a little shorter in the future.
With regard to the featured images we associate with every article, you gave us a resounding “Meh.” On a scale of 1 to 5, 52% ranked those images as a 3, 33% as a 4, and 10% as a 5.
Those who read only the email issue see those images only as small thumbnails to the right of the article title, since they’d take up too much space at full size. For the Web site and the individual articles that TidBITS members get, the images appear at the top of the article as a way of providing an attractive visual element to draw the reader in. They’re a common feature in Web publications and are reputed to be essential for attracting traffic on social media platforms and Apple News.
However, I have to admit that they’re an inordinate amount of work to find or create. So I’m going to try dropping them for a week or two. We’ll see if there is any apparent impact, particularly in Apple News, which really wants images. There may be some compromises that will feed a stock set of images to Apple News without requiring extra effort for every article.
Comments
With our infrastructure transition, we moved from a lightweight commenting system that Glenn Fleishman and I designed to an open-source system called Discourse. It was like switching from a canoe to an aircraft carrier in terms of flexibility and capabilities. Overall, I genuinely like Discourse as both a user and an administrator, and it integrates nicely with WordPress to embed comments under articles and simultaneously power the TidBITS Talk discussion forum.
As far as those comments go, 52% of readers at least scan the comments at the bottom of each article, although only about 21% of people read them more regularly or follow the ongoing conversation as it evolves. About 27% never read the comments, which isn’t too surprising given that email subscribers have to click through from the issue to our Web site to see them.
Of the 30% of respondents who said they did comment, nearly all contribute something only a few times per year, with only about 4% writing in more frequently. Such percentages are probably to be expected, but remember that we welcome all constructive input on our articles. Some articles have garnered comment discussions that significantly expand on the topic in useful ways.
New Content
At times, we feel as though we’re being left behind by the sexier worlds of podcasting and short-form video. However, when we asked if you’d be likely to subscribe to either an Apple-related podcast or a regular YouTube series, the answers were identical and unequivocal:
- Just under 20% of respondents thought they’d subscribe.
- Just under 40% of respondents were on the fence, which I take to mean they’d try an episode or two but probably wouldn’t end up subscribing.
- Over 40% of respondents were sure they wouldn’t subscribe, due either to information overload or lack of desire for audio or video content.
I’m not going to make any promises either way, but this wasn’t a ringing endorsement from the people we most want to help.
Final Comments
We had five different free-form comment areas in the survey, culminating with the open-ended “Anything else about TidBITS you’d like to comment on, suggest, or otherwise tell us?” Those questions attracted 1375 responses overall, and I’ve collected them into long documents and am reading through them. Many are highly flattering, and I thank you for the kind words—they mean a lot to us. The criticisms were welcome as well, since only by knowing what people don’t like as much can we improve, and I’ll be taking those into account moving forward.
I regret not asking for an email address as one of the questions because quite a few people complained about problems that are easily solved or just made comments to which I’d like to respond. Since I can’t write back to people directly, I’m going to answer those questions and comments in an article. I strongly suspect that if one person is confused about something, others are as well, so my answers might end up helping quite a few people. And hey, more articles are good!
Thanks to all who responded to the survey, and I hope everyone has enjoyed this peek behind the curtains.
Interesting results. I can’t remember exactly my responses but something struck me when reading about the survey results. The TidBits web site was listed as a major method of reading the TidBits articles. I never go directly to the website but in effect use it to access the content: I use a RSS reader (igHome) as my Safari home page. So I see five articles listed and it is a convenient way to select the articles I am interested in. This refreshes every 10 minutes so I should see everything you publish. But when I get the email listing I find articles there that I never saw via the RSS feed - sometimes articles I wish I had seen earlier. I’m not sure why this happens and I gather that RSS feeds are not so popular any more. I’m gland TidBits still supports them.
David
Thank you for offering the survey and for your analysis - which I am still digesting lol. I visit the website daily and the Tidbits Talk frequently. I am a long term fan of TidBITS and find it the simplest way to get breaking info and excellent resources on what is happening in Apple’s ever evolving (many times of late frustrating) activities. I especially value the ability to be aware of what programs have updates as some of my most used apps are not from the App Store. Please keep up the excellent work. Your openness to new ideas and the support of input that comes from your readers really helps me!
Huh! That shouldn’t happen, of course—the RSS feed is all programmatic—so let me know if you can identify an article that never appeared in RSS so I can try to track it down.
Thanks so much for the kind words, which echoed many of the comments in the survey itself!
I’m also a little surprised that Home Automation was so low on the list but I guess that means the rest of the TidBITS readership is as unimpressed by HomeKit as I am. Personally, I use Indigo and am really happy with its power and flexibility. The downside is that it has an interface only a programmer could love. I think it would be impossible for a normal person to use it. But HomeKit swings too far in the other direction.
And as far as Entertainment, look at your demographic. This isn’t the demographic any network or streaming service is aiming for. I’m not surprised your readers are left cold by what’s happening with Apple TV+ and by Apple Arcade.
In case the above comes across harshly, I want to be clear that I am really happy with TidBITS and am looking forward to continuing to be a supporter for years to come.
Snap on Automation. Hmm.
I wonder if you map the level of engaged reader to the areas of interest, whether there’s any buried trends in there. It might shift or inflect your take if a deeper participant was keener on certain areas. Just pondering…
Disappointed I have to say on the podcast and video front. I know text has high value per effort expended in production but the young folk (and this reader) like video and listening while doing other things, might shift the demographic perception if that was a concern.
Netflix achieved its massive global scale because it has produced content for every demographic and psychographic group and has made it clear they will continue to do so. If they weren’t concerned about the 50+ demographic, they wouldn’t have spent $80 million for the exclusive rights to stream Friends in 2019. And they wouldn’t be in negotiations to try to get them to extend the deal to share it with the soon to be released Disney streaming service that recently acquired Warner/Hulu. Netflix has a ton of content aimed at adults 45+.
Apple has made it very clear that they will also producing content for all ages. They’ll be starting with general content. I think that once the service is released, readers might be more interested in it. There have been articles and discussions here about MoviePass, Sinema, Netflix (an article in TidBITS about the just released DVD service convinced me I should subscribe), Tivo, Hulu, YouTube TV, etc.
I’m not sure the survey answers could tease out such subtlety, but I will note that some of the non-HomeKit home automation stuff we’ve talked about such the Wyze cameras and sensors, and the Wireless Sensor Tags I use, has garnered more engagement in the comments.
Perhaps we need to focus more on home automation articles that solve more common problems than we have been doing apart from the pieces I mentioned above.
As Marilyn suggests below, I’m not sure it’s quite as simple as our demographic not being targeted. One common discussion when we have dinner with both sets of our parents is what everyone’s found to watch on Netflix recently. (Personal recommendations trump weak algorithmic suggestions any day!)
However, as much as people in this demographic may be interested in watching the content, I think it’s safe to say that we’re not interested in reading about it. I know almost no one my age who pays attention to entertainment industry goings-on. We’ve felt the need to cover some of them because it was Apple, and because Netflix is such a cultural driver that came out of the Internet, but it seems that readers aren’t that interested in the meta discussions.
I think what it comes down is that we’d need to find a way to make such a project sufficiently different from everything else out there and fun for us to produce. The low level of interest says to me that people wouldn’t just flock to anything we did purely because we were doing it.
For some of us, it is that we have little to automate. For example, I live in an apartment building withe the entrance on an interior hallway and no street facing windows. So using home automation for home security needs are pretty much a non-starter for me. I also live in a temperate climate, don’t have air conditioning, and haven’t needed to use my heating system in sevral years. When the apartment gets too hot, I either leave or use floor fans.
A while ago, I set up two WeMo outlets so we could turn the lights above our bed on and off with Siri. It felt a little forced, until I did something while testing iOS 13 that messed everything up in the Home app, requiring me to set it up again from scratch. I didn’t get around to that for a few days, though, and having to go back to controlling the lights manually (their switches are in awkward positions) proved to be quite annoying.
My point in sharing this is that security cameras and thermostats are perhaps lousy things to think about when it comes to home automation. Lights and outlets are much easier to start with and more fun.
I am also surprised about HomeKit… but on reflection, less so. The reason is that the set-up so quickly becomes highly specific. I did a fairly comprehensive remodel so that all my lights and blinds are connected to Lutron Casseta, and I very much imagined I would be controlling things by voice. In fact, I almost never do this. What I have found to be the primary use-case is actually timers, especially related to sunset, and in particular geolocation. So, I have a small hallway, and have set the light to come on, at sunset, when I approach home. I have a few more like this: certain blinds raise when I leave in the morning, and not before: and I cannot imagine now living in a home without blinds controlled in this way because it’s so obviously better. Christmas tree lights is another actually: it’s so micro but not having to reach around and get covered in pine needles every evening, and have the lights on a schedule, and controllable, is so worth a HomeKit plug I wouldn’t know where to begin.
So, what to conclude? Well your survey is its own conclusion, but I would guess that the “install” part is as interesting to many people as your choice of washer and dryer. There are two things that might be interesting. First, is new equipment, and maybe not gadgets, but systems? The Caseta system recently increased the number of devices, and now goes head-to-head with professional systems. Second, is use cases, and ways in which HomeKit can support those use cases?
Or not!
Personally, I think you guys are doing a hella great job and I’m very happy with TidBITS just the way it is. I realize that’s somewhat of a duh response because obviously you guys are trying to improve things so you want feedback on what to improve, change, etc. I can’t help it, I think TidBITS is just fine. I’m very grateful for the work you guys put into it every week. The fact that we can also come here to ask about other issues or discuss topics raised by the articles just makes it even better IMHO.
Re: automation, I have little interest in home automation myself. The things I do at home usually are of so little complexity (lights, heating), that going to automation and getting involved with software, using/training Siri, applying updates, keeping things secure, etc. to me adds a level of complexity that I simply cannot offset by any foreseen convenience benefit. Plus, I kind of like the idea of not controlling everything from one device or through one protocol. Just smells to me a bit like too many eggs in one basket. I’m fine with analog switches for lights. I could get a timer, but so far I haven’t even felt the need for that. My furnace is programable but I don’t use that either. The Bay Area climate is so moderate, it’s usually just set and forget for me.
Some might say we should be trying to attract younger readers, but from watching our son Tristan and his friends, it seems unlikely that we’d be able to succeed at that.
Perfect segue if I ever saw one - recruit Tristan into the family business and let him target younger generation.
Here’s a suggestion: Have “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” buttons (or analogous text links if that wouldn’t work) in the email newsletter for each article. Then you could get more granular feedback on what people like. Clicking the link would take you to the Discussion for that article as well as register the vote. For instance, I really enjoyed the very next article, “Less… Is More? Apple’s Inconsistent Ellipsis Icons Inspire User Confusion,” and would like to see…erm…more interface articles, as I’m something of an interface nerd.
P.S. Or maybe just “thumbs up.” I wouldn’t bother to hit “thumbs down” the vast majority of the time; I just scroll past articles that don’t interest me.
Interesting to witness this in another site, quite a fractious handover (at least on their already difficult forum) to a son in Luminous Landscape, a very different site and community, but similar in the blend of passionate amateur to professional practitioners focussed on photography.
What has been interesting is the focus shift the younger team bring, what was good and valued before, leaning toward the technical, is probably leaning more to the aesthetic and the individual practitioner. Not that both aren’t present either side of the transition just a shift in emphasis.
Snap, just to say it.
I do welcome articles on automation, I have no HomeKit hub, my interest is more in the Automator/Hazel/Keyboard Maestro/Applescript end of things.
Seems to me that Tidbits’ prime demographic, weighted in the 50-70 age group, explains most of the survey results. This “older” demographic–people like myself–have a more traditional view of how things should work, and how to handle problems (as Adam points out). We like to use our primary computers for many functions and just want them to function as expected. We have less tolerance for time-wasting nonsense, and are more concerned with privacy and security. We are less likely to adopt new technologies unless we think the benefits outweigh the hassles. Those last few items might explain the lack of interest in “home automation,” which is full of hassles and security issues.
Older, wiser, more weary, and more cynical means that I, for one, am not endlessly intrigued by every little thing that Apple does. I can see past the marketing and hype; just give me something that works and doesn’t make me suffer for it! So maybe it’s a generational thing…
Funny you should mention that. I belong to the younger part of that age bracket yet often I feel as if I’m the one looking for more ‘conservative’ methods or tools. I’m heavily invested in desktop and work, iOS to me is not a huge concern. I also find that often I’m more critical of Apple’s latest changes than what I perceive as the median around here. I always figured it’s because I might be an older member. Obviously that’s not right.
As the author of “Take Control of Apple Home Automation,” I’m a little disappointed in the lack of home automation interest, but not surprised. Home automation has a “chicken and egg” sort of problem. You won’t understand how great it is until you use it (or have it taken away, in Adam’s case), but to use it you have to make an initial investment. It’s a leap of faith.
I think the main friction point is cost. We get excellent responses to our WyzeCam articles, and whenever the home automation book goes on sale, it flies off the virtual shelves. But of course HomeKit gear is more expensive than non-HomeKit gear. So maybe the takeaway is to do an occasional home automation article when we find something good and cheap, which is a rare combination.
I was more disappointed by the lack of interest in the Terminal! Oh well.
Hehe.
I have to admit, I can’t help you with automation, but when it comes to Terminal I promise you’ll have my full attention. ;)
Alas, that’s highly unlikely to happen. He’s a computer science major at Cornell, focusing on machine learning, and tech journalism doesn’t particularly interest him. Besides, he has always been incredulous that we could make a living doing what we do, given that neither he nor anyone he knows would ever pay for content on the Internet.
Yep, had same conversation with my students when I detailed all my subscriptions, they were astounded that I did so.
I’m fully into HomeKit myself; I have a summer home with a basement that gets wet and I have a camera that allows me to see the basement, an Eve temp and humidity sensor that lets me monitor those, and a few outlets, one of which is a dehumidifier; so when the humidity goes up, it automatically turns on the dehumidifier, and turns it off when the humidity gets low enough. And it allows me to monitor it from anywhere I have an internet connection (so long, of course, that the power and internet connectivity remains on at the summer house.)
I don’t use it so much for lights, but we have a few in our main house that are timed to turn on so it looks like people are home. I can even turn on and off the TV to make it look like somebody is there. And I even have a HomeKit device connected to a hose to periodically water a new tree we had planted this past spring.
So I’m probably one of the ones that is interested in more HomeKit coverage, but really it was all pretty easy to figure out on my own anyway.
I don’t remember my response, but it was probably not interested. Mainly because I have all this Amazon/Echo stuff. ;) I am interested in automating several things in my home, and probably should investigate HomeKit further, to see if it’s a good fit for me.
Honestly, I’m terrified of using the Terminal. My late hubby was a Terminal guru, and anytime something had to be done with the Terminal on my iMac he did it for me. Now he’s gone and I’m lost and hesitant. Last time I used a Terminal command was to turn off something new that just annoyed the stuffing out of me. Then Apple made another change and I needed to turn it back on–but I’d managed to lose the instructions and web page.
Totally my fault, and after 2 days I found the info and fixed it, but that was my last foray into the Terminal.
I was surprised that you rushed the Survey Results. I often let my routines—such as reading TidBITS and TidBITS-Talk—lapse if I am focused on a short-term project (I generally catch up, but it takes time).
If your survey had remained open for 2 or 3 weeks I certainly would have responded.
In fact, the survey is still technically open. We just said it would close to encourage people to fill it out fairly quickly so we’d be able work on the results in a timely fashion. With no deadlines, people tend to put things off indefinitely.
I suspect that this has more to do with your RSS reader only showing five articles, so somehow there are ones that fall between the cracks. I use an RSS app (ReadKit on Mac, Reeder on iOS) as my primary way of reading TidBITS, and all the articles appear for me. I either read the article in my RSS app and then click through to show it on a webpage so I can see what the comments are, or go to the webpage straight away.