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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 do

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.

AnimalMuppet 5y ago
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 many people very excited compared to Windows 10. A 20 Meg hard drive was miles ahead of floppies. But the last storage improvement was... nice, but not life-changing. Hercules graphics was massively better than stock IBM PC graphics. The latest graphics card is exciting if you're a gamer, I guess, but it doesn't move the needle much for everyone else. And so on. It was eye-opening every month to see what was new. It doesn't feel like that any more.
- dhosek 5y ago
  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.
  - Koshkin 5y ago
    > SSD vs HDD. That was a massive change. 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.
    - dhosek 5y ago
      The speed difference is really quite dramatic. When I replaced the boot hard drive on my Mac Mini with a SSD after it died, it was an immediately obvious increase in performance.
- ddingus 5y ago
  It was screaming fast! We went from a discussion on how many colors a machine had, whether it flogged a speaker for sound, or had an actual sound system, to multi-media excellence, and it happened QUICK! I sure enjoyed my trip through those times. But, there may be more to come! Custom silicon is on it's way back around the computing circle of life. The way I see it, the different options we've seen hold fairly stable for a decade or so have all converged on similar ground. Differentiation is sometimes more contrived than actual, like the software, or form factor of a device, maybe it's ports, mean more than the actual computing potential it has. Additionally, we've somewhat peaked in terms of sequential compute, and things like multi-media are fairly ordinary, and of sufficient quality many don't see a big distinction between pro efforts and gear and consumer grade gear. Or, it just flat doesn't matter. And now the dam is breaking! To gain advantage, and also lock customers in, leverage mindshare and data, other investments users have or are making, custom silicon is looking very appealing now. On top of that, the bigger players have the resources to do the development, more of what people need to know about doing it is out there, and tools are more available now to the point where mere mortals can play in this game. A quick look at something relevant? Consider the Parallax Propeller 2 microcontroller chip. It's done on an older process, 130nm I believe. On that process, the creator and team managed to get an 8 core, 300Mhz plus design with a lot of features. That project took a decade or so, and north of a million. While high, that's not out of line compared to what it all was just a short time before. Chips are done, available for people to buy and build into projects / products. It's a custom design with particular emphasis on real time, parallel or concurrent programming, and data streaming, measurement with all I/O pins capable of analog or digital operation. For some applications nothing will come close. A great example of what can be done now. The bigger players have all done, or are working on custom silicon for one reason or another. AI, network, computation, etc... Soon, we are going to head back to something closer to that era. More highly differentiated devices / machines. Maybe there is room for the kind of work BYTE did in some form... But, whether that happens or not, we may well see custom silicon push things forward again in dramatic ways.
- Scramblejams 5y ago
  Agree. I started with personal computing in 1983 and what was so exciting about that time, I think, was that each new generation of hardware could do something incredibly cool the prior generation fundamentally could not. I remember feeling a nearly constant level of excitement about tech, always so stoked to see what was coming next and what incredible new capability it would bring to the table. And Moore's Law didn't hurt either, those clock rate increases! Today's tech is amazing, but the progress is mostly incremental and that doesn't tend to get the blood pumping.
- datavirtue 5y ago
  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.
- endgame 5y ago
  The Windows 3.11 -> 95 transition was built on user research, but the Windows 10 -> 11 transition was build to enable market research. There are many competing interests that get in the way of building things that the users actually want.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    What users want is usually boring. We express what we want in terms of what we know. The real kick comes from what we never knew we wanted. My last Symbian phone was objectively better than the first iPhone, but we never suspected the fluid multi-touch UI was what we wanted until after we saw that Jeff Han demo. A future of computers that are just faster, with more pixels, is very boring.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  > I think a lot of it was because things were moving so fast I collect and restore vintage computers. I rarely would think of a PC as interesting because, as you go back the past couple decades, it’s essentially the same computer, but slower. And not even that much slower - a surprising amount of my work is done on an 8 year old laptop. It’s not as fast as the new corporate issue MBP, but it’s fast enough. And it has the same amount of memory and twice the storage. Back then the very idea of working on an 8 year old computer was ludicrous.

AnimalMuppet 5y ago

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 many people very excited compared to Windows 10. A 20 Meg hard drive was miles ahead of floppies. But the last storage improvement was... nice, but not life-changing. Hercules graphics was massively better than stock IBM PC graphics. The latest graphics card is exciting if you're a gamer, I guess, but it doesn't move the needle much for everyone else. And so on. It was eye-opening every month to see what was new. It doesn't feel like that any more.

dhosek 5y ago
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.
- Koshkin 5y ago
  > SSD vs HDD. That was a massive change. 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.
  - dhosek 5y ago
    The speed difference is really quite dramatic. When I replaced the boot hard drive on my Mac Mini with a SSD after it died, it was an immediately obvious increase in performance.
ddingus 5y ago
It was screaming fast! We went from a discussion on how many colors a machine had, whether it flogged a speaker for sound, or had an actual sound system, to multi-media excellence, and it happened QUICK! I sure enjoyed my trip through those times. But, there may be more to come! Custom silicon is on it's way back around the computing circle of life. The way I see it, the different options we've seen hold fairly stable for a decade or so have all converged on similar ground. Differentiation is sometimes more contrived than actual, like the software, or form factor of a device, maybe it's ports, mean more than the actual computing potential it has. Additionally, we've somewhat peaked in terms of sequential compute, and things like multi-media are fairly ordinary, and of sufficient quality many don't see a big distinction between pro efforts and gear and consumer grade gear. Or, it just flat doesn't matter. And now the dam is breaking! To gain advantage, and also lock customers in, leverage mindshare and data, other investments users have or are making, custom silicon is looking very appealing now. On top of that, the bigger players have the resources to do the development, more of what people need to know about doing it is out there, and tools are more available now to the point where mere mortals can play in this game. A quick look at something relevant? Consider the Parallax Propeller 2 microcontroller chip. It's done on an older process, 130nm I believe. On that process, the creator and team managed to get an 8 core, 300Mhz plus design with a lot of features. That project took a decade or so, and north of a million. While high, that's not out of line compared to what it all was just a short time before. Chips are done, available for people to buy and build into projects / products. It's a custom design with particular emphasis on real time, parallel or concurrent programming, and data streaming, measurement with all I/O pins capable of analog or digital operation. For some applications nothing will come close. A great example of what can be done now. The bigger players have all done, or are working on custom silicon for one reason or another. AI, network, computation, etc... Soon, we are going to head back to something closer to that era. More highly differentiated devices / machines. Maybe there is room for the kind of work BYTE did in some form... But, whether that happens or not, we may well see custom silicon push things forward again in dramatic ways.
Scramblejams 5y ago
Agree. I started with personal computing in 1983 and what was so exciting about that time, I think, was that each new generation of hardware could do something incredibly cool the prior generation fundamentally could not. I remember feeling a nearly constant level of excitement about tech, always so stoked to see what was coming next and what incredible new capability it would bring to the table. And Moore's Law didn't hurt either, those clock rate increases! Today's tech is amazing, but the progress is mostly incremental and that doesn't tend to get the blood pumping.
datavirtue 5y ago
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.
endgame 5y ago
The Windows 3.11 -> 95 transition was built on user research, but the Windows 10 -> 11 transition was build to enable market research. There are many competing interests that get in the way of building things that the users actually want.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  What users want is usually boring. We express what we want in terms of what we know. The real kick comes from what we never knew we wanted. My last Symbian phone was objectively better than the first iPhone, but we never suspected the fluid multi-touch UI was what we wanted until after we saw that Jeff Han demo. A future of computers that are just faster, with more pixels, is very boring.
rbanffy 5y ago
> I think a lot of it was because things were moving so fast I collect and restore vintage computers. I rarely would think of a PC as interesting because, as you go back the past couple decades, it’s essentially the same computer, but slower. And not even that much slower - a surprising amount of my work is done on an 8 year old laptop. It’s not as fast as the new corporate issue MBP, but it’s fast enough. And it has the same amount of memory and twice the storage. Back then the very idea of working on an 8 year old computer was ludicrous.