21–30 of 96 posts
I would love to see a reboot of Byte Magazine even if it only came back in digital form.
A new BYTE would quickly start diluting its value by offering a podcast, YT channel, IG/Snap Stories, affiliate links and a website slathered with Adsense ads. You'll wonder why they bothered rebooting it in the first place.
> We may experience a gradual drift into a surveillance society ...
> The merging of cellular phones, portable computers, and highspeed networked servers offers many exciting possibilities.
> The Internet will be as ubiquitous in our lives as cable television is today.
https://vintageapple.org/byte/pdf/199612_Byte_Magazine_Vol_2... - page 86 in the magazine, page 90 in the PDF
Looking at one of these now I remember how magazines made technology very exciting (I don't think it was just because I was younger). I think a lot of it was down to the visuals. You just won't get illustrations like that on someone's blog. The illustrations made the technology seem more real and certainly more glamorous.
I don't think it was just because we were younger. I also don't think it was just because of the visuals (though those helped). I think a lot of it was because things were moving so fast. The 386 was an astonishing improvement over the 286. But now, the next generation Intel chip is... kind of nice, I guess? But it's not all that exciting. Windows 95 was a massive improvement over Windows 3.0. Windows 11 doesn't make…
People complain about ads , but browse any volume and count the number of ads (may be easier to count the number of non-ads). And you had to pay for that stuff.
More importantly, they couldn’t track you, nor did their selection rely on any knowlege of you (besides the fact that you were reading byte magazine.)
Nostalgia! Was an early editor/writer for Byte in the very early days (first few issues), though had to back off due to school load (in college at the time). Carl Helmers and Dan Fylstra (founder of VisiCorp (publisher of VisiCalc), friend from high school days in San Diego) and I were all working at Intermetrics in Cambridge, and got together to start Byte, visiting Wayne and Virginia Green (big ham radio publisher…
Great publication. I sure wish we had something similar today...
Heck, I would take it printed.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think it was just because we were younger. I also don't think it was just because of the visuals (though those helped). I think a lot of it was because things were moving so fast. The 386 was an astonishing improvement over the 286. But now, the next generation Intel chip is... kind of nice, I guess? But it's not all that exciting. Windows 95 was a massive improvement over Windows 3.0. Windows 11 doesn't make…
I think the HDD vs floppies comparison is more sensibly analogized to SSD vs HDD. That was a massive change. I think the Apple Silicon vs Intel upgrade is pretty exciting (although a lot of that feels like promise of what might be coming in the M2 and beyond), but yes, it's definitely a different world than it was in the 90s which was probably the period of most rapid technical advancement in personal computing.
On a tech level, sure. But not something the majority of users have even noticed. (Less noise, maybe.)
> Apple Silicon vs Intel upgrade
I've had a hard time explaining to someone the meaning of this (and why they should care).
So, no, there is no comparison to the level of innovation and the general excitement around the computer tech they saw back in the 80s.