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Vintage Byte Magazine Library

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Re: Vintage Byte Magazine Library

#51

Post by Sunspark »

I miss those days so much. 80s computer magazines were exciting. The web is great, but it doesn't have the anticipation of waiting for the next issue and then sitting down to dig into it with focused attention to see what was fresh and new and to be wowed by all the things you couldn't afford. A 20 megabyte hard drive for ONLY $1000? That's a good price! Unimaginable luxury, I only had floppy disks into the 1990s.

I am someone who used to type in code from a magazine before I knew what the SAVE command was. You would never see someone doing something like that today.

"In 1983 an average of one new computer magazine appeared each week. By late that year more than 200 existed."

80s computer magazines were thick too! Compute! magazine published 392 pages in December 1983.

Re: Vintage Byte Magazine Library

#52

Post by dhosek »

Sunspark wrote: post #51

I miss those days so much. 80s computer magazines were exciting. The web is great, but it doesn't have the anticipation of waiting for the next issue and then sitting down to dig into it with focused attention to see what was fresh and new and to be wowed by all the things you couldn't afford. A 20 megabyte hard drive for ONLY $1000? That's a good price! Unimaginable luxury, I only had floppy disks into the 1990s. I…

I remember how shocking it was when SoftTalk came out. It didn't have program listings in it!

Re: Vintage Byte Magazine Library

#54

Post by datavirtue »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #15
discreteevent wrote: post #9

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…

Yeah. $10k on a machine that was old hat by the time it got dusty and people just kept buying and buying. We will never see anything like that again.

I got my hands on well over $20000 worth of computers before I was 18 from hand-me-downs. You couldn't hardly resell used computers because they were so out of date by that time...the reason people got rid of them.

If it had not been for the used computers and all the churn (enthusiast grandfather in charge of tech for the family business) I would have never laid hands on one and most likely would have ended up in construction.

Re: Vintage Byte Magazine Library

#55

Post by datavirtue »

hanche wrote: post #25
cblconfederate wrote: post #23

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.

But those ads are static. They have no animated gifs or videos, having to rely on typography and still images to catch your attention. As a result, they are much less intrusive. 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.)

People like ads in magazines because they are relevant and informative of the progress of the industry. I learn nearly as much from ads reading "Fine Home Building" as I do reading the excellent technical articles.

Re: Vintage Byte Magazine Library

#56

Post by datavirtue »

jjarvis wrote: post #14

I would love to see a reboot of Byte Magazine even if it only came back in digital form.

I still get magazines...mostly for the building trade. Fuck digital. There is something about print that makes people get their shit together and produce quality content. You can't just wing it with some fluffy clickbait and Google ad-sense.

Re: Vintage Byte Magazine Library

#57

Post by datavirtue »

ddingus wrote: post #38
rchaud wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A digital-only publication cannot survive without playing the same content strategy games as all the other publications out there. 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.

Or... It's subscription only, and maybe those other things don't matter so much.

No one can resist adsense. "Yeah let's just skip out on that $50k a month, our customers don't want to see all those ads." The incintive, like free money for corporate stock buybacks, is just irresistible.

Re: Vintage Byte Magazine Library

#58

Post by JKCalhoun »

nunez wrote: post #29

Looking at some of these, it's kind of sad how it went from a deeply technical magazine (the earliest publication had an ad to join ACM, and it has several circuit diagrams) to a pop-tech supermarket mag (with tons of ads, lots of high-level hit pieces (how to get ready for y2k, for example), and A BAJILLIONTY ADS. I'm glad that they kept some semblance of technical content towards the end.

You're describing the industry.

Re: Vintage Byte Magazine Library

#59

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

Sunspark wrote: post #51

I miss those days so much. 80s computer magazines were exciting. The web is great, but it doesn't have the anticipation of waiting for the next issue and then sitting down to dig into it with focused attention to see what was fresh and new and to be wowed by all the things you couldn't afford. A 20 megabyte hard drive for ONLY $1000? That's a good price! Unimaginable luxury, I only had floppy disks into the 1990s. I…

> I am someone who used to type in code from a magazine

I did this, too, but after being burned again and again with software that didn’t work after hours of typing, I gave up. Disheartening for a child. Of course, I could have been responsible for the problems.

Re: Vintage Byte Magazine Library

#60

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

EarlKing wrote: post #40

This is well timed. I was actually going over the Internet Archive's collection just the other day. It's a bit sad to watch the decline in quality as you move through the volumes. Somewhere around 1985 - 1986 BYTE shifted towards becoming just another magazine hocking hardware/software. It got so bad that some issues started to look like a rip-off of Ziff-Davis's PC Magazine. Around that point I'm betting a lot of BY…

They did get sold around then to McGraw Hill. Probably not a coincidence.
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