Here's a brain-teaser for you: what would happen, rhetorically speaking, if a widely-read weekly Mac-centric print magazine decided to move to an entirely online presence as its print incarnation first went cross-platform and then died amid a million yawns? And what would happen if it then lost its single remaining entertaining columnist, adopted a responsible "no rumors" policy, and finally posted articles that typically read like corporate press releases sans insight or analysis? It's an interesting thought experiment.

In completely unrelated news, faithful viewer Robert Fernando informs us that Mac media mainstay MacWEEK is finally calling it quits. Those of you who have been with the Mac platform for more than a few years may recall the giddy thrill of receiving a free copy of MacWEEK in the mail every seven days, scanning the headlines for the latest juice on Apple's future plans, flipping to the back page to see what sort of drug-addled rumorological magic Mac The Knife was weaving, and finally settling down and reading the publication cover-to-cover. When you were finished, you felt as up to date with the world of Apple as was humanly possible without infiltrating One Infinite Loop itself. (Of course, eventually the immediacy of the Internet would change all that.)

So there you have it; as of today, MacWEEK's content has been "absorbed" into MacCentral. We're a little sad to see MacWEEK finally silenced, but we'd be far sadder if the publication hadn't actually died ages ago-- it just took some time to realize it had croaked. We don't think this is entirely a case of "Internet Killed The Magazine Star," since MacWEEK had a second chance as a purely digital creature and basically blew it, in our opinion. Placing the time of death is a tricky task; some, we're sure, would say that MacWEEK has been an empty husk ever since the print edition went the way of all paper. Personally, we stopped checking the site regularly once Mac the Knife departed. But whenever the spirit that was MacWEEK really kicked its little legs in the air, the death certificate reads March 2nd, 2001.

Ironically, in Andrew Gore's requiem for the publication, he first claims that he'll "set the record straight" about Mac the Knife's identity "once and for all," and then does nothing of the sort; instead he reveals that, yes, the Knife's "voice" belonged to a single person, but instead of revealing who that person is/was, he just says that "Mac the Knife is MacWEEK." Well, given that the Knife left many moons ago, that might help us place MacWEEK's time of death a little closer to the mark. In any case, we miss what MacWEEK was; we're not particularly mourning the loss of what MacWEEK eventually turned out to be. It's still a sad occasion, though.