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TidBITS Needs Your Support in 2024

As 2023 winds down, many readers will be receiving TidBITS membership renewal notices in email. If you’re among them, thanks in advance for renewing—we rely on your continued support! If you have trouble, contact Lauri Reinhardt at [email protected]. Since TidBITS memberships run on a rolling annual basis, if you don’t get a renewal reminder, it’s likely because you joined at some other time of year. You can check your membership expiration date on your account page; if it’s blank, your membership auto-renews.

When I say TidBITS relies on your support, I’m not exaggerating. Revenue from memberships is the only way I can devote the time necessary to write, edit, and publish TidBITS each week. In the past year, I’ve focused more on practical and personal topics where I can provide valuable information and insights rather than contributing to the cacophony surrounding the latest industry inanity.

In new efforts, our Do You Use It? polls have proved highly popular, regularly eliciting 500–1000 votes and hundreds of fascinating comments. Once voting has settled down, I’ve used them as launchpads for articles that explore industry and technical topics, underpinned by the poll result data.

Support from members has also enabled me to focus more time on TidBITS Talk, which has been drawing significantly more traffic. In October 2023, it recorded a record 470,000 page views, twice the number in October 2022. I’ve been extremely pleased with how helpful our regulars have been in answering quirky technical questions, and I encourage you to turn there first if you need help.

Finally, the financial support from TidBITS members has enabled us to continue featuring content from regular contributors like Agen Schmitz, Glenn Fleishman, Julio Ojeda-Zapata, Jeff Carlson, and Michael Cohen, along with paying for Web hosting, email distribution, article editing, and ongoing maintenance. Keeping all the balls in the air is neither easy nor cheap.

So, if you aren’t yet part of the TidBITS membership program, would you join the nearly 3600 readers who help keep TidBITS vibrant?

A TidBITS membership comes with a few perks:

  • Discounts of 15% to 50% on 90+ Mac products worth over $1100
  • A 30% discount on all Take Control books
  • The option to receive new articles in email as they’re published
  • A full-text RSS feed (non-members get a summary-only feed)
  • A version of the TidBITS website free of paid banner ads
  • Optional acknowledgment on our public TidBITS Members page

Scroll through our Membership Benefits page to see all the Mac apps on which members receive discounts. You’ll find essential apps many TidBITS readers use and recommend, like 1Password, Audio Hijack, ChronoSync, Default Folder X, DEVONthink, Keyboard Maestro, KeyCue, LaunchBar, Nisus Writer Pro, PopChar X, Scrivener, SpamSieve, TextExpander, and more. (Contact me if you’d like to add your company’s product to the list.)

Sample TidBITS membership benefits

You can choose from different levels of support—$20, $50, $100, or $1000—or set your own monthly or yearly amount. There’s also a Boost TidBITS button at the bottom of that page if you want to use PayPal or make an extra out-of-cycle donation. The membership perks are the same at each level, with one exception: the $1000 TidBITS Angel level is a lifetime membership that includes dinner with Tonya and me if you’re in Ithaca or we’re in your city.

Again, if you find TidBITS content valuable, want to support our efforts, or have received personal help simply because you asked, please become a TidBITS member. You’ll have our undying gratitude and can bask in the good feeling that every article you read in 2024 was made possible in part by your generosity. Thank you!

Subscribe today so you don’t miss any TidBITS articles!

Every week you’ll get tech tips, in-depth reviews, and insightful news analysis for discerning Apple users. For over 33 years, we’ve published professional, member-supported tech journalism that makes you smarter.

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Comments About TidBITS Needs Your Support in 2024

Notable Replies

  1. On the (member) account page, a “Renew” button may help too. At least I don’t see any :)

  2. Thanks for all you do, Adam. I really enjoy all that you publish. I shall happily renew my membership.
    All good wishes, Brian.

  3. Hi Peter. You are already a TidBITS member! :smile:

    Email me at [email protected] if you would like additional details about your membership. Thanks for you ongoing support!

  4. Adam,
    I would be happy to stuff a little Hanukkah gelt in your Christmas stocking, but I can’t find a link to do it anymore… I know I did it once, but I’ve looked twice now. I expected to find it from my account.

    ;~}

  5. On the same page you manage/change your membership level, there’s a Boost TidBITS button at the bottom.

  6. Thanks for thinking of us! It’s at the bottom of the Join TidBITS page. Lauri and I are talking soon to see what questions she’s been getting and if there are ways we can tweak the default Paid Memberships Pro pages to be more clear.

    In fact, I just realized I could put the Boost TidBITS button at the bottom of the Account page too. :slight_smile:

  7. Wow, that was hard to find, Adam, even after Simon and your responses here. It turns out, I had no idea where my “Account” page was. I presumed that all of this would be available by clicking on my personal image up in the right corner, and following one of the drop-down menu items, that one of them was my account. Don’t know how I managed to “renew” but my Account says I did last April. I guess I currently presumed “Membership” was where potential members go… That and the fact that I virtually never go out to the TidBits Home level anymore. Or maybe I’m a little bit more than the usual Seasonally Distracted just now… ;~}

  8. And now that " TidBITS Member Benefits" reminds me, I don’t know how many Take Control Books I’ve bought since I joined here, but I have no I idea how to take advantage of the discount.

  9. Yeah, it’s a bit confusing.

    Your user icon in the upper-right corner of the TidBITS Talk page is for managing your Discourse login, which is separate from the main TidBITS page:

    On the main TidBITS page, the user icon in the upper-right corner (red box) is from Wordpress and takes you to your Wordpress account information. You need to click the “Account” link (blue box) in the header section of the main TidBITS page to get to the subscription/donation links:

  10. Interesting. I do not have that user icon, or even the bar that has the user icon near the right side.

    For that matter, I don’t have the line above the tabs (on the same level as the Close, Minimize, and Maximize buttons) that starts with TidBITS.

  11. Click on Account for a tidbits.com page. Then the boost button is at the bottom of the page.
    Your account icon shows for talk.tidbits.com pages.
    If you’re not on Wordpress that’s all you’ll see.

  12. That probably means you’re not logged in to a Wordpress account. That black toolbar (that ends with “Howdy, David C.” for me) is from Wordpress. I assume TidBITS is based on WP, and the toolbar appears because I’m logged in to it.

    That may be because I’m using Firefox and I have it configured to present a traditional title bar and not merge the tabs into its space.

  13. @Will_B Sorry for any confusion— as others have said, TidBITS and TidBITS Talk are completely different sites and can’t be harmonized entirely, which is why there’s a TidBITS Home link at the top of all TidBITS Talk pages. Once you’re on the main TidBITS site, you can click Log In if necessary, and then Account once you’re logged in.

    When you’re logged in on the main TidBITS site, clicking the Benefits link in the nav bar shows you the necessary link or coupon code for all the discounts. If you’re not logged in, you won’t see it. (The site knows who is a member and who isn’t, and adjusts the display accordingly.)

    https://tidbits.com/membership/benefits/

    @Shamino is seeing the black WordPress bar at the top of the main TidBITS site because he has the Contributor role within WordPress, having written an article for TidBITS. No one other than authors and editors will see that.

  14. Thank you; that clears that up.

    I also use Firefox, but I have very few changes from the default.

    Off-topic. A local grocery store’s weekly brochure no longer displays in Firefox. I complained to the store manager, who called corporate. The person at corporate asked, “What’s Firefox?”

  15. Thanks for letting me know. I see that bar on many other Wordpress-based sites and assumed it shows up here for the same reason I see it elsewhere. Now I know otherwise.

    I’ve been using it for so long and have a profile that’s existed and been updated going back probably over 20 years, so I have no idea what the default is.

    But if you right-click (or ctrl-click) in the toolbar and select “Customize Toolbar…”, you will see a box at the bottom of the customization page a checkbox to turn the title bar on and off:

    If you disable the title bar, then the tabs are moved into the space that the bar would otherwise have occupied. I leave it on, so I can always see the full title for the currently-visible page/tab, no matter how many tabs may be open at the time.

  16. Yes, I do.

    Okay. It seems like a trade-off between seeing that information and giving up a bit of screen real estate. Even though I’m on a big screen now, I’m still reluctant to give up window area, and I can see the full title by hovering on the tab (whether or not the tab is active). On a laptop screen, I think I would definitely choose not to turn the title bar on.

    I’ll ponder this. Thank you for the detailed instructions and information (on this topic and so many others).

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