End of an era indeed. I read this site religiously back when MacRumors only did rumors and not news, so probably 1999-2003 or so. I assume MR starting to do news was the reason I stopped, but I actually don't remember. The thing is though, they were never the best, only the most thorough. If there was a piece of Apple-related news, they had it, but the writing wasn't top notch, and there's not a single editorial I can remember sticking out. Contrast with MacEdition.net (not sure if that's even still around), which had pretty good news, but great writing and fantastic editorials, really more like blogs. Stopped reading that once the content there slowed to a trickle though.
Similar story here, although it was their forums that I frequented. I helped people who had questions, requested help myself from anything to tech questions to feedback on my latest software, and enjoyed the goofy posts there. It was a bit of Reddit and HN before I knew about those communities.
The forums eventually became less valuable, less fun, but I'm not precisely sure why.
