5 ms·

I'd say Byte was really falling apart around 1985 or so. Prior to that it was by hobbyists, for hobbyists, and it showed. After that it started to lurch towards

I'd say Byte was really falling apart around 1985 or so. Prior to that it was by hobbyists, for hobbyists, and it showed. After that it started to lurch towards being just another magazine for consoomers, with Steve being really the only vestige of the magazine's original purpose... until he jumped ship to create Circuit Cellar INK.

ghaff 4y ago
Byte was idiosyncratic compared to say PC Magazine (which still had things like assembly language listings into the 90s) but there was definitely a whole swizzling of hobbyist vis a vis corporate PC users going on from the late 80s. At some point Byte became just a hard to define muddle. Dr. Dobbs had a similar problem in a more software-oriented role. ADDED: A lot of computer events were going through a similar problem. At some point you're about everything and nothing.
- EarlKing 4y ago
  PC Magazine was definitely trying to be a little bit of everything. They went in hard on hardware/software reviews clearly aimed at home office users, but then you'd have columns on nifty utilities in raw assembly, and then game reviews shoved in the back. Eventually they seemed to just junk everything except hardware/software reviews and basically became a glossier, smaller version of Computer Shopper, at which point I just tuned out.
- rbanffy 4y ago
  PC Magazine was very focused on PCs. You wouldn’t read about Suns, or NeXTs, Amigas, or even Macs. Byte did a nice review of the Archimedes, the first ARM-based desktop. The ecosystem was a lot more diverse back then than other publications would make you think.
  - bluedino 4y ago
    In the 1990's it seemed like once a year or so they would review various RISC workstations or servers https://books.google.com/books?id=MfbDrFwiARgC&pg=PA170&dq=pc.magazine+sun.sparc+workstation&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiCz7GfmoD5AhXSpIkEHUp9Cr8QuwV6BAgMEAY#v=onepage&q=pc.magazine%20sun.sparc%20workstation&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=MfbDrFwiARgC&pg=PA170&dq=p... You'd also occasionally get them on other tests. And Mac vs PC tests were common as well.
    - rbanffy 4y ago
      That's true, but it was never with the breadth and depth of BYTE. They had in-depth issues about many different families of computers and operating systems. You wouldn't see articles about Transputers detailing experimental OSs for running on them. I remember the first time I read about Python was on BYTE.
spc476 4y ago
I subscribed to Byte Magazine from 1985 to about 1988 or 89. My feeling was that by 1985, Byte had drifted away from the hobbyist market and was drifting more towards a computer science journal (kind of). By late 1987 it had shifted more towards a PC rag what with the rise of the 386 clones during that period. It definitely wasn't worth reading once Robert Tinney stopped doing the covers.
- retrocryptid 4y ago
  There were some decent issues in the late 80s, but yeah, it had passed its prime. They relaunched as a website in... uh... 2009 maybe? I had a long conversation with the editor at that time about what I loved about Byte and Dr. Dobbs in the early days. I think it went over their heads and they sort of went back to "reviewing mice and computer monitors."

ghaff 4y ago

Byte was idiosyncratic compared to say PC Magazine (which still had things like assembly language listings into the 90s) but there was definitely a whole swizzling of hobbyist vis a vis corporate PC users going on from the late 80s. At some point Byte became just a hard to define muddle. Dr. Dobbs had a similar problem in a more software-oriented role. ADDED: A lot of computer events were going through a similar problem. At some point you're about everything and nothing.

EarlKing 4y ago
PC Magazine was definitely trying to be a little bit of everything. They went in hard on hardware/software reviews clearly aimed at home office users, but then you'd have columns on nifty utilities in raw assembly, and then game reviews shoved in the back. Eventually they seemed to just junk everything except hardware/software reviews and basically became a glossier, smaller version of Computer Shopper, at which point I just tuned out.
rbanffy 4y ago
PC Magazine was very focused on PCs. You wouldn’t read about Suns, or NeXTs, Amigas, or even Macs. Byte did a nice review of the Archimedes, the first ARM-based desktop. The ecosystem was a lot more diverse back then than other publications would make you think.
- bluedino 4y ago
  In the 1990's it seemed like once a year or so they would review various RISC workstations or servers https://books.google.com/books?id=MfbDrFwiARgC&pg=PA170&dq=pc.magazine+sun.sparc+workstation&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiCz7GfmoD5AhXSpIkEHUp9Cr8QuwV6BAgMEAY#v=onepage&q=pc.magazine%20sun.sparc%20workstation&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=MfbDrFwiARgC&pg=PA170&dq=p... You'd also occasionally get them on other tests. And Mac vs PC tests were common as well.
  - rbanffy 4y ago
    That's true, but it was never with the breadth and depth of BYTE. They had in-depth issues about many different families of computers and operating systems. You wouldn't see articles about Transputers detailing experimental OSs for running on them. I remember the first time I read about Python was on BYTE.

spc476 4y ago

I subscribed to Byte Magazine from 1985 to about 1988 or 89. My feeling was that by 1985, Byte had drifted away from the hobbyist market and was drifting more towards a computer science journal (kind of). By late 1987 it had shifted more towards a PC rag what with the rise of the 386 clones during that period. It definitely wasn't worth reading once Robert Tinney stopped doing the covers.

retrocryptid 4y ago
There were some decent issues in the late 80s, but yeah, it had passed its prime. They relaunched as a website in... uh... 2009 maybe? I had a long conversation with the editor at that time about what I loved about Byte and Dr. Dobbs in the early days. I think it went over their heads and they sort of went back to "reviewing mice and computer monitors."