Byte Magazine 1975-1995

Jerry Pournelle's column wouldn't have existed if he had owned an Apple Computer.

I'm having a "you kids get off my lawn" senior moment here... When Byte was in it's heyday, micro-computing was (largely) the domain of weirdo hobbyists. And sure, there was the nascent internet and plenty of BBSes, but most of what I learned came from user groups. MANY people bought early Apple ][s, Commodore PETs or TRS-80s to scratch some personal engineering itch. The HOWTO articles in Byte cater to this community. It had the same feel to me as the modern "maker" community. Most microcomputers of the era came with BASIC in ROM so you could train the computer to do what you wanted it to do. The idea that computer software was "media" wasn't really well developed. Or rather, everyone was making their own media.

BYTE was originally the magazine of people who made their own computers. Quickly became the magazine of people who bought Apple ]['s or TRS-80s or assembled their own computers from parts so they could write their own software. And then morphed into the magazine for people who had a clear idea for a business (or personal) data processing problem and were looking for ideas from "experts" for how to solve it (usually in the form of a product review.)

They re-launched Byte a decade ago, but I think it's time had passed. Maybe it should have been a review of various web sites and apps (like "How I organized my record collection with Air-Table" or "How I ripped all my CDs with iTunes" or "How I ditched my local music collection with Spotify.")

Compared to modern times, few people were using microcomputers and we were all (from necessity) very interested in a few of the same topics (programming, buying affordable systems and how to make an Epson FX-80 print properly.) Byte could run an article about BNF meta-syntax or "how to do a mailing list" and a huge percentage of the readership was actually interested. More than just an ur-wikipedia, Byte let you know what was important to know by running articles about it.

By the mid-80s it had sort of lost that, certainly by the early 90s. Not so much because the quality declined, but because the readership expanded and like all good businesses, they followed the money. It's core readership in 1977 was a niche in 1987, and probably not as profitable.

BYTE was awesome. But it was awesome because it fit the times so perfectly. (Actually it changed a couple times to keep fitting the times as the times changed.) And then one day it didn't. The community of people I knew had moved on to Dr. Dobbs for interesting software stuff and Computer Shopper for product reviews.

Alas, poor BYTE! I knew it, Horatio -- a magazine of infinite jest.

I finally made an account to post this comment. But, I love BYTE magazine! It was such an amazing resource during it's time. I first dug into them for a project I've been working on (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6m7vDhscGzU), and then I found myself looking at more. It truly captured something special. I wonder if there's anything that comes close these days.

If you spend the time to read through these older ones, you'll see they were doing something special. They'd often share programs and circuits in the magazine that others could recreate at home. I wonder how difficult it was to learn about computers, we have so many resources these days.

Yeah. The ads had a different feel, because things were moving so fast. The ads (often) were telling you something new was available, or something improved was available, or something was less expensive. They (often) weren't just trying to manipulate you into buying the same old stuff that you didn't need.

I remember looking through the latest issue, and at least once or twice an issue thinking "Huh, I never even thought of trying to have a computer do that." Issue after issue, month after month, there was brand new stuff that exceeded what I thought computers could do. I read the ads to learn what was happening.

I found his columns fun, but I have to admit that this hypothetical might have been a net win in technical accuracy.