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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 t
by EarlKing 5y ago
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 BYTE readers left for greener pastures at Circuit Cellar Ink and Dr. Dobb's.
- TedDoesntTalk 5y agoThey did get sold around then to McGraw Hill. Probably not a coincidence.
- rbanffy 5y agoAs PCs consolidated the market, a lot of the initial diversity died. When the hardware platform consolidated, so did the software and it became much less important to be able to program for the platform you chose because there were very few to choose from. There was, of course, a ton on innovation on peripherals. Laser, ink jet printers, optical storage seemed to be the future (and it was, for some time), Unix workstations… Even after the PC killed off most of the home computer market, the high-end was still a thriving ecosystem.
- georgeecollins 5y agoDr Dobb's was good too. It never had the magic for me that Byte did, but I remember it being interesting.