What is the catalyts for this? Apple's market share is similar to what is was a few years ago. Is there a decline in ad revenues? What is the reason for this.
My guess (as someone who worked for a decade+ as a journalist before leaving to create http://recent.io/) is increased competition for readers and advertising dollars. What <guywithabike> said is correct, especially the decline of print. Who wants to wait a month or two to find out more about yesterday's watch announcement? How many HN readers are actually paying for a print subscription to MacWorld?
Also, even if MacWorld moved entirely online, it's not like its web site is one of the only places to find this info, as the print magazine was in the 1980s. A lot of news organizations that are fierce competitors now simply didn't exist a decade or two ago. Hence today's major layoffs as opposed to reassigning the existing staff to the web. (When I look at the Recent.io knowledge graph, the top of the list of news organizations that cover Apple includes: Fool.com, Cult of Mac, Silicon Alley Insider, BGR, and TUAW.)
I wouldn't be surprised to see MacWorld with legacy costs and pay structures that make it less competitive against these upstarts.
My only print subscription is Bloomberg Businessweek. Seeing the week's cover in my mailbox is a highlight of my Saturday. But I got three years for $20.
The growth of tech websites has made print-based magazines extremely difficult to operate at profit.
While there are far more people using Apple devices, there are also much larger support communities for them as well, so a printed magazine is largely redundant.
Declining print subscriptions, most likely, and pressures to increase profit margins. They're ceasing print publication, but continuing to operate the website.
This is unfortunate, but that's the nature of publishing in this newfangled media landscape. (As they say.)
It seems like there's a lot of competition for "apple rumors" in general but I think the worst damage comes from within - the entire tech reporting industry just plagiarizes and cannibalizes other people's work, it doesn't require as much talent or manpower to reword articles.
The magazine market seems to be the worst possible use case for print, especially in the tech sector. With newspapers, at least you are only ever 1 day or maybe 1 week (sunday edition) behind the news, and its all general interest so there's probably something your reader hasn't read about in there.
On the contrary, look at the core demographic of a tech magazine to begin with: people obsessed enough to buy an entire magazine about one company's products. Add to that that that company's devotees are tech savvy and want the information yesterday, and you have a recipe for disaster for a magazine that comes out a month later with info.
Maybe a solution would be to focus on more in-depth style articles that cover exclusive information. I'm not sure that there's enough creativity around today for a publisher to be comfortable doing it but that'd be a way to produce non-daily content, if that makes sense.
The magazine market is running on fumes. Most of the print media companies haven't been able to replace the kind of revenue they used to see from subscriptions and in-print magazine advertisements in the on-line world.
Online advertising revenues per reader are through the floor compared to magazines, and everyone's going online now. You can sell a page in a magazine going out to 20-30,000 people for $5,000 or more. Getting $100+ CPM on a Web page doesn't happen.
The transition to mixed print/digital or all digital. Not handled well by magazine people. Some are making the transition (The Economist, Popular Mechanics) some are not (MacWorld and pretty much every other IDG title).
The only time I've ever bought a copy was when I was flying and needed something to read while taking off and landing, and even those days are gone now. Pretty sure I read maybe one page.
