The mid-1990s were a dour time for Mac users. Every mention of Apple in the news came after the word “beleaguered” and half of it was about which company was rumored to be Apple's next prospective buyer—Microsoft, Dell, Sony, Disney, and on and on.
Copland had been announced, and delayed, and it was becoming clear that the wonderful new operating system with stability, speed, and full backwards compatibility was not likely to materialize as promised. On the hardware side, Mac accessories and peripherals were a niche market and priced accordingly; the experience of a Mac user in a computer store was that of seeing a shiny new Zip drive, then buying one for twice the price of the PC version because you were cursed with a SCSI port rather than a parallel port. That's if there was a Mac version of what you wanted at all.
The mainstream Mac press at the time—primarily the two Mac-centered magazines of the time, Macworld and MacUser—were… well, mainstream. Corporate, plain, boring. It was news coverage, and the news was often bad.
Then Imagine launched MacAddict in 1996. Issue #1 had a ginormous 3D rendering of a six-color Apple logo on the front cover, against a blue sky with God-rays, with the headline “Why the Mac's Future is Bright”.
I don't remember the specific case they made to support that claim and it kind of doesn't matter. The tone of this magazine was a breath of fresh air. We needed optimism and excitement and MacAddict delivered it every month, in the “irreverent” style of edgy humor that was trendy in the mid- to late-1990s. (Not all of which has aged well, I'm sure.)
A year later, of course, the NeXT acquisition happened and began the beginning of the end of the end. Copland was axed, and Tempo—a more incremental release—was made the new Mac OS 8, while Apple began the longer-term work of turning NeXT's “UNIX-based” operating system into what would eventually become Mac OS X.
MacAddict's importance faded over time. The scrappy, “irreverent” style went out of fashion around the time that the last “You Don't Know Jack” game for a decade shipped; the magazine's mascot appeared less and less; staff rotated out. Moreover, the need for it was relieved: The Mac's future was bright, and we no longer needed a magazine particularly devoted to telling us what was by then abundantly evident. Ultimately the MacAddict brand was retired and the magazine became “Mac|Life”, which is still published.
I'll always appreciate that MacAddict delivered a shot of hope right when it was needed.