Freqently Asked Questions

Q: Reprints of articles?

A: Yes, articles may be reprinted with permission of the authors. Just ask by sending an Email to the author or to us. Cite macCompanion and link to us when republishing the article requested.

Q: Are we old?

A: As old as personal computer dirt! Collectively. But we are hygienically pleasing. We have legacy and some baggage. That only strengthens our resolve to do a better job, but we try to do so wisely.

Q: Are we professionals?

A: Define professional. We don't bleed "Wall Street". We do however either own, run or work for businesses and participate in our communities and neighborhoods for the betterment of society.

Q: How did you pick the name macCompanion?

A: By a quick, nearly lightening-speed method using iChat with our diverse team of writers and reviewers and a quick web-search narrowing it down to a field of 10 or so from a field of 70 or so, then voting. It took about a week. And we wanted a "warm friendly atmosphere" for people to come visit often. Don't you think it rolls off the tongue easily? And we are multilingual.

Q: How did you come up with the "Look and Feel" of the macCompanion website?

A: It evolved and continues to do so. We try things. Some work, some don't. It is a work-in-progress. No website stays potent if it remains stagnant. We want to appear friendly and not staid. We try not to take ourselves too seriously.

Q: Why did you pick MPN, LLC for a company name?

A: It is a parody of MSN. And nobody else decided to call themselves "Macintosh Professionals" and lived long enough to tell about it. We added the word "Network", because that is what we seem to do best: reaching out to others who have similar interests, projects and ideas. And we enjoy evangelizing those efforts.

Q: Are you ever going to make money off this project?

A: We'd like to, but that remains to be seen. Right now it is a "money-pit", but if people can buy "dehydrated water" in cans and others can sell knick-knacks and make a living at it, we have a fighting chance.

Q: Why did you go International?

A: The world doesn't all speak American English and we'd like to give them the opportunity to know what we know about an environment that is designed to improve the lives of everyone without prejudice.

Q: So are you going to make your site look "professional"?

A: In Aesop's fable, the tortoise won the race, not the hare. There is a site with the nasty 4-letter F-word that has a graveyard full of "professional" look-and-feel sites. (f***edcompany.com) "Professional" doesn't necessarily mean "good". In fact, a lot of so-called e-commerce sites are doing quite well without the "look-and-feel" of Professionalism. The "Time-Machine" website has lots more defunct "professional" website's that have come and gone. We are here for the long-term, or plan to be anyway. Our focus is on functionality first.

Q: Okay, so who is your target audience?

A: Anyone world-wide who would like to drop by and visit for a while and is interested in learning a little about an "alternative" computing environment that works well enough is our audience. They don't have to be "cowed" or intimidated by a type of tool that affects all walks of life everywhere - the personal computer.

Q: So why run a site that is Mac-centric?

A: Why not? The platform and concepts behind it both perform well. The company that makes it keeps producing better products all the time. And we like the folks that use the product and also those folks that produce applications for that platform. We've noticed that they just make the quality of computing life better. It's not Star Trek yet, but give it another decade...

 

It is exciting to be congregating in the midst of great mortal people who have been blessed with great immortal minds, don't you think? We do!