Hurray to John for revealing this just now. I was contacted a couple of weeks ago by Phill Ryu of Macheist and asked if I was interested in helping him promote MacheistII. Phill said that a series of blogs we’re going to be hacked in jest, and following this the Macheist site itself would succumb and MacheistII would be revealed to everyone. The entire ploy sounded harmless, incredibly inventive, and a lot of fun, so I jumped at the chance to help out.
Aiding the decision I also saw that one of the founders of MacApper, Glenn Wolsey, had already gotten involved. With dozens of active staff members at MacApper it made it a bit painful that I was not able to let any of my writers know what was up, but if I had let anyone know I knew the cat would be out of the bag very fast. So the decision was made to keep quiet and nobody was told aside from a couple close friends.
So last Tuesday I followed Phil’s instructions, took MacApper down for a day leaving the prebuilt defaced page, and I felt good knowing that I was part of such a goofball stunt. I figured MacHeistII would be a smash success, developers would sell Mac software, and we would all get a laugh out of it when Phill and the guys revealed the plot.
I never received any money to help out Phil and the MH crew, and I don’t think Glenn did either. I was glad to help out because I know that when we do cross blog promotion (as we have in the past), it’s always great to have support from your peers. I also know that Mac software is what gives MacApper its subject matter, and helping developers sell software has always been a part of our modus operandi here. I wanted MHII to be a success, and helping Phill out was an easy decision.
Alright so the entire story seemed air tight until those crafty Norwegians over at mac1.no (nice!) started to poke some holes in it. This was when I made a really bad and stupid mistake for which I feel awful about. In a blog post I tried to justify the hacking by blaming it on my WordPress install. This was a really stupid thing to say, and it honestly didn’t occur to me at the time, but I inadvertently scared the crap out of thousands of WP users. For this I am genuinely sorry and apologize to WordPress and anyone who I annoyed or scared with my comments. Which was a sh*tload of people.
So in retrospect the other people I ended up hurting are both the readers and writers here. I really hadn’t thought out how angry you people would get if the plot was uncovered early, which is what happened yesterday. I guess I just want to say that none of the writers here at MacApper knew about the stunt. In fact keeping it away from them was not that easy, and a few of them are not happy with me today. The stunt did not go over as we thought it would and I hope you understand that I couldn’t let anyone in on it without risking the entire story unravelling on us. I also wasn’t willing to ‘blow the whistle’ until the Macheist guys spilled the beans as I wanted to honor my commitment to their promotion. So this made it kind of difficult on all of us.
So I guess in closing I will just say again that my intentions were not meant to draw attention to MacApper in a shady attempt to gain readers, or sell out to an advertiser, or to screw over the good people at WordPress in any way. People will draw their own conclusions about the whole thing and if people feel compelled not to visit MacApper anymore, nothing I can say will change that. I guess I would just remind those people that MacApper is the result of dozens of voices, of whom I am just one, and I really hope that one bad apple doesn’t spoil the lot.
Now if you’ll just excuse me while I slip into this asbestos layered suit.
