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Some links inside the article. Byte magazine was plenty of ads, and articles can continue after jumping 300 pages Start: https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1984-08/page/n137/... Continuation: https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1984-08/page/n405/... Results: https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1984-08/page/n411/...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
From the beginning of Byte magazine until about 1984 are really fun to read. The ads were probably annoying at the time of release, but not they are fun and interesting to read. I like the 1983 issue with imaging where they are talking about movie effects for "Tron" and "Revenge of the Jedi". I wished they would of had more UNIX in the issues, however it was usually unaffordable. But a fun look, at least for me, to t…
The ads were not annoying at the time of release. I really enjoyed reading those ads and finding out about products specs and prices, remember that we didn’t have the Web back then and Byte magazine was my main source of information about what was available.
Byte almost was reverse Playboy: you almost didn’t read it for the articles.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
From the beginning of Byte magazine until about 1984 are really fun to read. The ads were probably annoying at the time of release, but not they are fun and interesting to read. I like the 1983 issue with imaging where they are talking about movie effects for "Tron" and "Revenge of the Jedi". I wished they would of had more UNIX in the issues, however it was usually unaffordable. But a fun look, at least for me, to t…
The ads were not annoying at the time of release. I really enjoyed reading those ads and finding out about products specs and prices, remember that we didn’t have the Web back then and Byte magazine was my main source of information about what was available.
Magazine ads where the way to get targeted views.
The scripts still run, my ancient (1st or 2nd gen) Raspberry Pi gets 0.54 seconds for the multi .. 6 benchmark
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The ads were not annoying at the time of release. I really enjoyed reading those ads and finding out about products specs and prices, remember that we didn’t have the Web back then and Byte magazine was my main source of information about what was available.
I think it “creative computing” or nibble magazine that had a postcard where you could check off interests and send it back. I did this in middle school and would occasionally get mailings about products (and credit card offers). Magazine ads where the way to get targeted views.
Those ads were unbelievably lucrative. Each page cost thousands of dollars, and there were hundreds and hundreds of them, plus smaller classifieds. Freelancers were paid fairly generously, but that outgoing was a drop in the ocean compared to the monthly ad income. Byte was posting profits of around $10m/year in the 80s.
Edit to add: many readers saw the ads as informative rather than intrusive and distracting. This was partly because many were creative and fun, but also because they went into far more technical detail than you'd see today, so they were almost a supplement to the official written copy.
The scripts still run, my ancient (1st or 2nd gen) Raspberry Pi gets 0.54 seconds for the multi .. 6 benchmark
That means the VAX-11/760 (120.000$-160.000$) was 27 times slower for that benchmark. And the PC-XT running PC/IX was 260x slower.