[HN Gopher] The era of American computer magazines has drawn to ...
___________________________________________________________________
The era of American computer magazines has drawn to a close
Author : ecliptik
Score : 282 points
Date : 2023-12-24 23:03 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (bytecellar.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (bytecellar.com)
| rdl wrote:
| As sad as this is, what's sadder is that Wired still exists and
| is diametrically opposed to the values it had when created.
| TheCraiggers wrote:
| > is diametrically opposed to the values it had when created
|
| And that's likely the reason it still exists. I don't think
| WIRED really survived the dot-com bubble popping.
| kiwih wrote:
| I'm a print subscriber to Wired and read it cover to cover most
| months. I find most issues pretty good and usually learn all
| kinds of interesting details about things happening in the tech
| world. They even have a hacker column, in a recent issue the
| writer talked about his journey setting up and using a
| raspberry pi based radio telescope. What would you say Wired is
| missing now compared to its first iterations?
| rdl wrote:
| I mostly stopped reading it in ~2021/2022, but from
| ~2015-2021 it was getting progressively more hostile to tech,
| fearful of anything new, etc.
|
| I skimmed the online list of articles for the past few months
| and it does look better (but not 1993-1997 high water mark,
| or 1997-2021 still ok). There have been two different editors
| in chief since 2021, maybe that was a factor.
| kiwih wrote:
| That's interesting and I appreciate your response. I didn't
| subscribe until 2020 so perhaps I missed the downward swing
| and have only seen it on the up?
| 10111001 wrote:
| > I mostly stopped reading it in ~2021/2022, but from
| ~2015-2021 it was getting progressively more hostile to
| tech, fearful of anything new, etc.
|
| It's would be hard for them to maintain the kind of techo-
| optimism they had in their early years, without sounding
| delusional, given what we've learned since.
| graphe wrote:
| When I think of wired I think of articles written by andrew
| hultkrans. I have a video of him I tried to get a
| discussion on, but even in 1993 he was already mentioning
| smart cards and tvs.
| TMWNN wrote:
| >What would you say Wired is missing now compared to its
| first iterations?
|
| _Wired_ 's so-called "review" of _Hogwarts Legacy_ is an
| abomination. <https://www.wired.com/review/hogwarts-legacy-
| review/>
|
| PS - Check out the author's other works for the magazine.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| The era of magazines in general has pretty much drawn to a close.
| intrasight wrote:
| Print I assume you mean
| StevePerkins wrote:
| What ARE sales of digital magazines like these days? On the
| rare occasions that I've had a passing thought to subscribe
| to one, I found that it's easy to subscribe but hard to
| unsubscribe, and so I never pulled the trigger.
|
| Then my public library started offering PressReader access
| for free (well, local property taxes notwithstanding). So,
| much like Spotify, I basically have a subscription to every
| magazine on Earth now.
|
| Interestingly, while I used to read stacks and stacks of
| print magazines back in the day, I very rarely think to even
| pull up PressReader. When I do, I just skim here and there
| for a few minutes before closing the app and doing something
| else.
|
| Digital magazines just don't FEEL like magazines, in the way
| that actual print magazines used to. They feel like blogs,
| from the pre-social media era when the Internet was still
| mostly long-form writing. I don't know if this really says
| something about the decline of magazines, or my own personal
| cognitive or attention-span decline after ~15 years of social
| media consumption.
| intrasight wrote:
| I read or listen to The Economist and The Atlantic cover to
| cover. I wouldn't if they didn't have audio editions.
| Social media and HN vie for my attention - I try to ignore.
| WilTimSon wrote:
| And even digital magazines are somehow feeling the effects:
| https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/27/23978042/popular-science...
|
| At the time this news came out, I thought PopSci was just no
| longer publishing on paper, but turns out even the digital
| magazine model isn't exciting enough to sustain itself
| sometimes.
| dboreham wrote:
| This may be geo dependent. On a recent field trip to the UK I
| was surprised to see that WH Smith had the same wall of
| magazines as when I was a kid.
| pico303 wrote:
| I hope not. I still subscribe to several print magazines, and
| the quality of the content is leaps and bounds better than any
| of the junk available to read online.
| keiferski wrote:
| Not as much as you'd think. Businesses like Monocle do pretty
| well in print, as do a lot of fashion / lifestyle sort of
| brands.
|
| https://www.monocle.com
|
| If you ever visit London, I highly recommend the MagCulture
| store. They also have a nice podcast:
| https://magculture.com/blogs/podcast
|
| It's definitely not the "default" like it used to be, though.
| pradn wrote:
| The reading experience on print is infinitely better, just
| because it's not tied to an electronic device. It's too easy to
| be distracted on a phone or even an e-reader.
|
| Every magazine, no matter how good the quality, has annoyances
| on their sites - cookie notices, newsletter sign ups, having to
| even log in, ads even for subscribers.
|
| For the two magazines I like to read in print (NYRB, LRB), even
| the ads are useful (mostly new books).
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| The selection of magazines today at Barnes & Noble is much
| better than it was at Waldenbooks when I was growing up in the
| 1980's.
| jgord wrote:
| Back in the day we had to rely on magazines for information, the
| books in the library were too old to cover the new stuff. Then it
| was BBS dialup filesharing boards, then the internet became a
| thing.
|
| My first exposure to programming in the early 80s was copying in
| a BASIC game from some magazine. I read Byte Magazine for Steve
| Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar and dreamed of buying an IBM compatible.
| Dr Dobbs Journal was just an incredible eye opener into the world
| of serious compute science / engineering , particularly Mike
| Abrashs column on 3D - it was a black art - and a series on
| implementing unix.
|
| It was great to see Linux Format and game mags in the early 00s,
| but I guess all good things evolve. Back then we would have
| wanted infinite information at our fingertips, one device to be a
| camera, mp3 player and phone all-in-one .. and flat screens that
| you could lift with one hand, so Im not complaining.
|
| I do worry that young people just see the magic, and dont learn
| how things actually work under the hood .. I think Scratch and
| Minecraft are wonderful in this regard because you get to
| construct things yourself.
|
| If we humans can build all these amazing things .. theres a
| chance we'll get our collective shit together and address climate
| change.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| I love this post.
|
| It's okay to have nostalgia for those times and still
| appreciate what we have now.
|
| It's a great point how we would have swapped that for this at
| that point of time.
| intrasight wrote:
| It has been an awesome and humbling experience to witness the
| last 40 years of computing. I wrote my first programs in
| Fortran on punched cards. Trying to live a healthy lifestyle so
| that I can witness the next 40 years.
| bradknowles wrote:
| My first computer program was taking an entire "choose your
| own adventure" type book and implementing it in Basic on my
| Commodore Vic-20. Took up all but about eleven bytes of RAM
| that I could cram into the thing, including the 16KB RAM
| module plugged into the back. That was the summer of 1982,
| two years before I graduated high school.
|
| I didn't start writing COBOL and FORTRAN programs on punched
| cards for the IBM 3081 mainframe until I got into college, in
| the fall of 1984.
| bradknowles wrote:
| Most of what I learned about computing in those early days
| came from Byte Magazine.
|
| I still want to know when we are going to get our
| Transputers that can run machine language code from any
| architecture of CPU, because even their microcode can be
| rewritten in software on the fly -- beyond what we can do
| with FPGAs.
| intrasight wrote:
| My friend's father had a Vic-20. I remember watching him
| type in basic programs from magazines. Then backing up on a
| casette.
| bloomingeek wrote:
| After buying several issues of MaximumPC and many conversations
| with people at work who could explain to me some of the
| questions I had, I finally used info from two separate issues
| to make a parts list. I drove to the nearest Fry's Electronic,
| Plano, Texas, and build my first PC. What a thrill! I marveled
| that I could build something that was so cutting-edge.
| osigurdson wrote:
| Humans are great and making things. Making collective decisions
| that might make everyone's lives suck more in the short term
| and possibly not make much difference in the long term isn't
| interesting to a lot of people. The only real way to reduce
| carbon emissions is via innovation. If you care about climate
| change stop protesting and start innovating.
| Qwertious wrote:
| Climate change is an unpriced economic externality. It's a
| _political problem_ , not a technical problem.
|
| If you want innovation, then create a market incentive for
| it. But that requires pushing bills that would _wreck_ the
| prospects of oil companies, and cause trillions of stranded
| assets, so they lobby against it.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > But that requires pushing bills that would wreck the
| prospects of oil companies, and cause trillions of stranded
| assets, so they lobby against it.
|
| The general public seems pretty opposed to higher fossil
| fuel prices.
| osigurdson wrote:
| Since there are no alternatives for the most part, this
| just becomes a lossy income redistribution program (with
| lots of opportunity for corruption). Also, as governments
| can simply decree who has to pay it and who is exempt it
| has the net effect of centralizing government power. If you
| want empirical evidence, just see what is happening in
| Canada.
| usrbinbash wrote:
| > If you care about climate change stop protesting and start
| innovating.
|
| The reason for climate change isn't a lack of technical
| innovation. We have ALL the innovations to change things. The
| reason for climate change is short-sighted greed, and a lack
| of political will, not a lack of scientific or technological
| capability.
| amelius wrote:
| The best thing we can do besides innovation is probably to
| put a brake on overconsumption by killing modern
| advertising practices.
| osigurdson wrote:
| A lack of will by the body politic or the lack of authority
| to compel behaviours of the electorate against its will?
| mkoryak wrote:
| I have a box of commodore magazines from ~1985 that I'm hanging
| on to because throwing them out seems wrong.
|
| My wife disagrees.
|
| Is she right?
| indus wrote:
| I have a whole garage shelf filled with National Geographic
| magazine since 2013---after I moved to the United States.
|
| Reading natgeo was a dream---I bought used copies roadside in
| the bylanes of Kolkata.
|
| Once in a while my SO questions the same. I change the topic
| and continue to cherish the collection.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Check if they're on the Internet Archive. If yes, toss them. If
| no, upload them then toss them. Eventually you have your
| magazines and a happy wife.
| mkoryak wrote:
| Internet archive might not be the best choice given their
| legal troubles.
| pessimizer wrote:
| You can download them.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| I know it's a lot of trouble, but if you put them on your
| local Craigslist or freecycle type thing, someone is likely
| to want them.
| corysama wrote:
| https://help.archive.org/help/how-do-i-make-a-physical-
| donat...
|
| Great for old books that you don't want taking up space. But,
| don't want to lose completely either.
| jetrink wrote:
| Something to consider is if you might have children and
| grandchildren who will stumble on them someday. One of my
| favorite things to do when I visited my grandparents was to go
| down into their basement and flip through their collections of
| Life, Popular Mechanics and National Geographic. It gave me a
| window into life in the decades before I was born in a way that
| history classes never could. As much as I love the Internet
| Archive, I would not have found clicking through a digital
| magazine nearly as absorbing.
| dpb001 wrote:
| I have had similar thoughts, but I suspect this sort of
| accidental discovery will be less interesting to future
| generations because of the competing volume of online
| content. I remember stumbling across a supply of second hand
| amateur radio magazines (QST and 73) as an 11 year old in the
| mid-60's that started me down the tech path. These days I
| would probably be in front of some sort of screen instead of
| poking around in my grandparent's basement or a used
| bookstore.
| cgh wrote:
| I had a reasonable collection of Transactor magazine from the
| '80s. They were formative to my childhood and my love of
| writing software for my C64. But I had to let them go. I found
| a good and appreciative home for them and freed up some space.
| And they are freely available online.
| self_awareness wrote:
| I bet she has some things which you would happily throw out?
| kleiba wrote:
| I'd rather separate from the wife than my classic magazine
| collection.
| qingcharles wrote:
| I'm accepting magazine donations for my encyclopedia. If
| they're something that isn't already available in electronic
| format then I will scan and upload them.
|
| It's not technically live yet, but there's a couple of test
| pages up:
|
| https://en.magazedia.wiki/cinefex-no-138
|
| https://en.magazedia.wiki/gq-style-usa-summer-2017
|
| I have something in the order of probably 2 million magazines
| in various electronic formats that I am working up organizing
| and uploading.
| fractallyte wrote:
| Your wife should learn to appreciate knowledge and skills
| outside of her "comfort zone". Her PoV is not the only valid
| one.
| tdeck wrote:
| Until recently an apple II magazine called Juiced.GS was still in
| print. I can't actually tell if it still is since their website
| is broken.
| ars wrote:
| It's still in print: https://juiced.gs/2023/07/juiced-gs-2024/
| pico303 wrote:
| I still subscribe to Juiced. It's a great magazine.
|
| Maybe I'm getting old and curmudgeonly, but there's nothing fun
| in computing anymore. If you check out IA and read old copies
| of Byte or CC, we were all looking forward to the next tech
| improvement, maybe a 5 MB hard disk that didn't cost as much as
| a car, or a printer that finally worked. Maybe sharing a bit of
| BASIC or assembler code. Is that next computer from Atari going
| to beat the new Apple II?
|
| These days, eh. Who's looking forward to anything?
| fragmede wrote:
| That whole AI thing pass you by?
| cookie_monsta wrote:
| I am still hoping for a printer that actually works
| theamk wrote:
| I bought some electronic hobbyist magazines few years ago (like
| Nuts & Volts) out of curiosity and because I always wanted
| subscription as a kid, but we never had it.
|
| It was utterly underwhelming. The writing was ok, but each issue
| was maybe an an equivalent of 1-2 days worth of hackaday.com
| articles and nowhere as detailed as personal blogs (think
| "sprites mods"). This means that most issues will have at most
| one interesting article, or maybe none.
|
| I would love to support the physical media, but it is simply not
| interesting enough.
| awsation wrote:
| Check Circuit Cellar (https://cc-
| webshop.com/collections/archives-circuit-cellar-i...)
| graphe wrote:
| That's unfortunate, as hackaday feels like that too me versus
| it's older writing style. I was hoping to see more advanced
| projects and I found it in this channel.
| https://youtu.be/Ma9FrN5COIo
| bombcar wrote:
| We had a local "computer magazine" that was free (the local
| computer shops paid to advertise in it) and the best thing
| about it was the absolute _variety_ of the content. From
| detailed "here's how to rebuild civilization with a soldering
| iron and an 8088" to "tuning graphics on your SGI" and so on,
| it gave a great cross-section of the industry.
| soupfordummies wrote:
| This was posted on here a couple months ago, fun read:
|
| http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5543
| Scubabear68 wrote:
| Heavy nostalgia for me thinking of computer magazines. We were
| fairly poor, but I could afford Byte magazine. Late 70's and
| early 80s I absorbed computing like a sponge from about age 10,
| with my only time using actual computers in stores like K-Mart.
| When I saw the ZX-80 kit in Popular Electronics I started my
| begging to dad. Then the ZX-81 came out along with its sister the
| Timex-Sinclair 1000, and it was finally cheap enough for my dad
| to manage it.
|
| I didn't care about the membrane keyboard. Or the tape cassette
| inputs. Or the crashing from the 16k ram pack. It was a computer,
| and it was mine. And I started applying all that Byte knowledge.
|
| I barely attended college, and didn't need to. Byte, and its
| lesser sisters was a far better education for me.
| LoFiSamurai wrote:
| This is incredible. Thanks for sharing!
| erie wrote:
| I have a similar nostalgia for the days I waited for Byte
| magazine to be translated into its Arabic version in Jordan and
| distributed in other countries in the region. Those translators
| would be sought after and get high salaries-$10k per month for
| other computer magazines-PC and Winmag magazines,in the late
| 90s, those would be photocopied and distributed in Yemen, Libya
| and other countries in the region. I subscribed to an
| e-newsletter from Winmag Karen Kenworthy, who wrote for Windows
| Magazine and Winmag.com for almost a decade. One Winmag author-
| Mike Elgan- is still active until now.
| weinzierl wrote:
| Heavy nostalgia for me too. I grew up in a small town that
| didn't even have a library back at the time. The monthly
| magazine was my only source of information and I still keep
| every single issue in my attic - that's how precious they were
| to my.
| NotSammyHagar wrote:
| I remember Byte magazine too. When I discovered it and was able
| to subscribe, every issue was full of exciting new ideas,
| amazing incredible list of endless companies selling pc stuff.
| My grandfather signed up for it, and then I later got my own
| subscription. I was in high school, and I loved the tech world.
| I don't know why I didn't try to get a job in some computer
| repair shop. I was lucky enough to have an atari 400, the
| casette drive, the chiclet keyboard. I learned basic, then I
| hand assembled 6502 assembly to do stuff. I had that great
| book, De Rei Atari, and I did some crazy stuff like a little
| assembly on the vertical blank interval to do some wacky visual
| effect.
|
| This was a foundational time for and probably millions of
| future engineers. I wish I could go back to that time ;-)
| ragingrobot wrote:
| I got an Atari XE when I was a kid. In addition to Byte for
| news, I always had to pick up a copy of Antic, an Atari
| specific magazine with listings (mnany simple games) in each
| issue to type in. Mostly in BASIC and some assembly.
| leptons wrote:
| In 5th grade, around 1980, I would skip school lunchtime and
| spend it in the school library instead. The library had all the
| computer magazines, and Byte was my favorite. I would rather
| read these computer magazines than eat. I saved my lunch money
| every day and saved up enough plus some birthday money to buy
| an Atari 400 and a small black and white TV. I was in heaven. I
| eat pretty well now, and no doubt those early magazines and my
| first computer led directly to my prosperity all these years
| later.
| jrowen wrote:
| In 5th grade, around 1998, a friend and I spent a few
| lunchtimes in the library decoding the Ultima Online rune
| alphabet from known town names on the paper map. In
| retrospect we probably could have just looked it up online
| but I think we hadn't yet developed the search-everything
| mindset.
|
| I hadn't thought of this in a long time before your comment
| reminded me.
| vishnugupta wrote:
| In India we had (still are? I don't know) Chip, Digit, Linux
| For You and similar computer magazines. I learned so much from
| them, they showcased a whole variety of things, hardware parts
| reviews, interesting PC builds, nifty tricks and so on.
|
| But what I looked forward to most was the included CDs. They
| would contain so many software, trial wares, free wares, game
| packs, screensavers, Winamp skins. It was like being a kid in a
| candy store.
| ixaxaar wrote:
| Hey, I had a very similar experience. Growing up in Bombay in
| the late 90s, chip and digit were literally my introduction
| to computing. Though I was not that much into gaming, they
| made me a fan of computer architecture, of graphics cards and
| so on. I guess being a nerd hanging around lamington road,
| almost harassing the shopkeepers for deeper tech specs of
| every component was more education than any university could
| ever provide.
|
| Then came Linux for you, and made me try my first Linux
| distro - xandros 2003. Then there was the complete 3 DVD
| Debian distro on LFY made me create an openmpi HPC in college
| among so many other things completely ignored by the formal
| education system.
|
| I think there is a real value to limited, quality information
| like these magazines that the internet ruined. Devs these
| days have unlimited information at their fingertips - the
| internet and now chatgpt. But now the onus is on us - are we
| asking the right questions?
| eldaisfish wrote:
| This stirred memories for me. My introduction to Indian
| computing magazines came later and my first Linux distro
| was a version of SuSe in 2007. I also fondly remember the
| free Linux CDs and DVDs that were around at the time. The
| magazines were one source, Ubuntu was another. The free
| Linux CD project was yet another.
|
| You raise a good question about drowning in the flood of
| info on the internet. The lack of gatekeepers has upsides
| as well as downsides. One of those downsides is the lack of
| quality control. The Linux and computing magazines in India
| were very high quality and they got a lot of people
| interested in computing.
| rupi wrote:
| I remember Computers@Home. Convinced my parents to buy me my
| first PC after reading that magazine. The included CDs were a
| delight. Internet was so slow that I only ever played game
| demos from the CD. Haven't thought about that magazine for
| years!
| blueridge wrote:
| Reminds me of: https://cabel.com/2023/11/06/dak-and-the-golden-
| age-of-gadge...
| jvm___ wrote:
| PC gamer with a demo CD glued to the front was the best. RIP.
| organsnyder wrote:
| And floppies before that. I remember getting the Transport
| Tycoon demo that way.
| bombcar wrote:
| Ah, the era of scrounging free floppies from AOL disks.
| CalRobert wrote:
| The other day I was wondering whatever happened to coconut
| monkey
| ianpenney wrote:
| Ctrl-F, "coconut"... was not disappointed. PC Gamer was an
| astounding resource in my childhood.
| biglyburrito wrote:
| I used to look forward to buying my monthly copy of Computer
| Shopper, if only to fantasize about upgrading the various
| components of my modest PC. More RAM, faster RAM, faster CPU,
| bigger HDD, more powerful GPU, bigger monitor, better monitor.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| You're going to love this.
| https://archive.org/details/computer_shopper
| bachmeier wrote:
| I was one of many that spent a lot of time with computer
| magazines like Computer Shopper. A few years back I was in a
| bookstore and took a look at the current offerings. There was
| some shock upon seeing the price, they were quite thin, and the
| articles had a feel of content written to meet a quota rather
| than a love of hacking. Maybe it was just the few I checked out
| that day, but it would not have been rational to buy them rather
| than a book.
| sitkack wrote:
| It doesn't have to.
| elif wrote:
| One of my favorite things to do as a teenager growing up was to
| get a ride to Barnes and noble, grab a coffee, and plant myself
| on the bench in the periodical section to pour through every page
| of the latest 2600, desperately trying to commit to my memory as
| much as possible.
|
| Even in the infantile form of the web where this sort of
| knowledge and editorial transfer of ideas really ought to have
| thrived, there was no digital compendium even remotely close to
| how dense and concisely curated these pages were. It really felt
| like every new issue was unlocking the next level of the game as
| the Internet was developing..
| techsupporter wrote:
| > to Barnes and noble, grab a coffee, and plant myself on the
| bench in the periodical section to pour through every page of
| the latest 2600, desperately trying to commit to my memory as
| much as possible
|
| I still go to my local Barnes & Noble, the last one remaining
| in Seattle, to get my 2600 (and a coffee!) every quarter. Why
| B&N? No other bookstore in the city sells 2600, at least not
| reliably.
|
| It's been a quarterly ritual for quite some time, even though I
| could just get a "lifetime" subscription and have more Hacker
| Quarterly pages to read than I could do in an actual lifetime.
| I still enjoy going and getting a paper magazine and reading
| spill about central offices and script code injection.
| 0xEF wrote:
| I do the same. Every quarter, I head to B&N, grab the latest
| 2600 and maybe browse for Make:, Nuts & Volts and Linux
| Format.
|
| I formerly had a subscription to 2600, but canceled it after
| realizing it was sold at B&N, which surprised me. Not that
| B&N chose to sell it, but that I could reliably find it in
| every location I visit. In my head, that meant 2600, a
| publication I actually care about, was getting exposure to
| curious minds, and that was important to me. So, I figured
| buying one at B&N was like me casting my vote that they
| should continue to carry it for the benefit of a future
| budding computer enthusiast.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I too go and get 2600 from B&N each quarter.
|
| B&N, while corporate so to speak, is also the last major gasp
| of fighting the Amazon hegemony. I root for them to succeed.
|
| Here in San Antonio, there are at least three if not four
| B&N. I know SA has a higher population than Seattle but
| hearing you only have one is surprising to me.
|
| I go once or twice a month to browse around, occasionally buy
| a magazine or stationery. The other day during holiday
| shopping, both locations in my area were quite busy at the
| register.
| chaostheory wrote:
| Imo it's surprising that this didn't happen 10 years ago
| neelc wrote:
| I was a subscriber of Maximum PC until 2014, when I realized I
| get all my information online.
|
| Nowadays, the people who would've subscribed to computer
| magazines go online. PC Magazine and PC World moved online and it
| worked very well for them.
|
| There's far more online, but also misinformation.
| 0xEF wrote:
| > but also misinformation
|
| I've often wondered about this. I grew up loving computer
| magazines, trusting everything they published. Was there
| actually more credibility with the information back then, or
| did it have more to do with the fact that far fewer "sources"
| had the ability to disseminate information (good or bad) and
| there was a natural system of checks and balances about what
| got published? We tended to believe what appeared in print
| because we assumed the info was verified before ink hit the
| page. These days, of course, we know better than to just
| blindly trust sources, but still get tricked into doing so
| anyway.
|
| I have no answers on this, I guess, but it is something worth
| thinking about.
| bombcar wrote:
| From my experience it was more "reliable" in that multiple
| people had looked at it before it went to print; but they'd
| make mistakes, too. Half the fun was reading the letters to
| editor pointing out mistakes.
| watersb wrote:
| A computer catalog at the local Radio Shack set me off in 1978 or
| '79.
|
| I started by reading BYTE Magazine cover to cover, in 1980, when
| I found it at the local library. It was a foreign language that I
| acquired, slowly, by immersion. I was twelve years old.
|
| I was a BYTE subscriber in 1999, when they abruptly ceased
| publication. The new owners switched my subscription to "PC
| Magazine", I believe. I sent them a note to the effect that BYTE
| had covered the whole industry, not just Windows-compatible
| machines, and they could donate the pro-rated price on the
| subscription remaining to the beer fund for the BYTE staff that
| had had no warning that the ace was about to fall.
|
| It's hard to build a culture, a cadre of writers and editors,
| with ad-hoc contributors to online sites. I subscribed to Ars
| Technica, Phoronix, and lwn.net with the lunch money I had left
| over as the year draws to a close. Please consider supporting
| such institutions, if you can. Every bit helps.
|
| https://arstechnica.com
|
| https://www.phoronix.com/phoronix-premium
|
| https://lwn.net/subscribe/
|
| https://archive.org/donate
| alwillis wrote:
| Long before I could afford a computer of my own, I bought
| computer magazines... probably a few hundred after it was all
| said and done.
|
| Before the internet, before BBSes and before floppy disks,
| magazines were the way programs were distributed in the late 70s
| and early 80s. You would type in the BASIC source code printed in
| magazines to give yourself something new to run.
|
| Just browsing the archive.org's collection brought back so many
| memories... like this one when the Steve Jobs launched NeXT [1].
|
| [1]:
| https://archive.org/embed/NeXTWORLDVol.1No.1JanuaryFebruary1...
| christkv wrote:
| I still subscribe to retro gamer out of the UK. Kids read it too.
| qingcharles wrote:
| I feel like the mainstream print magazine era died when Playboy
| ended:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playboy#Online-only
|
| There are lots of great niche magazines out there still printing
| if you have the money. I run a magazine encyclopedia so I see a
| lot of things coming across my screen and I'm actually floored by
| the number of magazines still printing.
| sturza wrote:
| Can you share a link?
| fuzztester wrote:
| Seconded. That encyclopedia would be quite interesting to
| see.
| MarceColl wrote:
| I'd like to know as well
| input_sh wrote:
| https://en.magazedia.wiki/
|
| (OP posted it in a different comment.)
| amelius wrote:
| Playboy is fundamentally different because of the buyer's shame
| that doesn't exist on the internet where buyers feel more
| comfortable making a naughty purchase.
|
| (Of course in reality, more people are watching you on the
| internet.)
| krallja wrote:
| Shoutout to Trade Journal Cooperative, which curates and
| delivers a trade journal to their subscribers every quarter. I
| stopped reading the journals as closely, but I still read the
| cover letter every quarter, since 2020.
|
| https://www.tradejournalcooperative.com/
| dfc wrote:
| Sounds like it could be neat or a total miss. I'm curious
| what some of the past journals have been?
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Computer magazines are gone in the whole world, not just US.
|
| It's a bit sad, I've enjoyed them. The articles were well written
| when compared to average online articles about hardware.
|
| But there's little point today in reading the news a few days or
| weeks after they happen.
|
| Most people are into instant gratification, they want to hear the
| news, they aren't interested in the overall experience of reading
| an article, they don't care about author's point, they don't care
| about learning new things.
|
| People just want to know in an instant how shinier is the latest
| iPhone when compared to the old one, how much does it cost and
| when they can get it. And a random online news outlet or random
| YouTube channel is enough for that.
|
| We are not just experiencing the demise of PC magazines, but also
| the demise of printed press and of major old news outlets.
|
| A guy with an YouTube channel or TikTok can have a greater
| audience than a former newspaper or magazine.
| mnky9800n wrote:
| I quite like the register as it typically has clever writing
| usrbinbash wrote:
| The problem is more that printed magazines are not searchable,
| and having a giant pile of paper in boxes in the attic, stuffed
| somewhere behind that awful vase and that camping equipment I
| haven't touched since the late 1990s, simply doesn't compare to
| typing a few keywords prefixed with `insite:DOMAIN` into a
| search bar, and getting really close to what I am looking for
| in an instant, and being able to bookmark thousands of articles
| (also searchable) in silica.
| novalis78 wrote:
| Not really. Heise's "ct" seems to be still going as strong as
| ever. heise.de - it's Europe's largest computer magazine.
|
| https://shop.heise.de/magazine/ct-magazin/
| rvdginste wrote:
| I see that the iX magazines are also from Heise. Have seen
| these before in supermarkets in Germany and it seemed like
| those magazines have interesting and technical articles.
| Sadly seems to be available in German only.
| rvdginste wrote:
| > We are not just experiencing the demise of PC magazines, but
| also the demise of printed press and of major old news outlets.
|
| I have the impression that nowadays most people no longer want
| to invest the time to read in-depth articles or books on a
| topic. Myself, I recently read a couple of technical books and
| came to the conclusion that a good technical book is still
| worth it. It explores a topic in a structured way and in-depth,
| and the information in a technical book is supposed to have
| been reviewed. If you read good technical blogs, you can pick
| up a couple of things here and there, but I think it will never
| be as efficient as reading a good technical book on a specific
| topic.
| beacon294 wrote:
| Which books did you find worth it lately?
| Rapzid wrote:
| I agree. People wanting to learn C# are told to watch YouTube
| entertainer videos and read the Microsoft docs haha.
|
| C# In a Nutshell still is worth it's weight IMHO.
| rightbyte wrote:
| > But there's little point today in reading the news a few days
| or weeks after they happen.
|
| I have to total opposite view. I only want to read the news
| like after at least a couple of days, so that there is time for
| things to become clear. The CNN kind of "breaking news" looping
| the whole day in "latest developments" is stupid since there is
| usually nothing to talk about but rumors and "experts" guessing
| or pushing some murky agenda.
| encoderer wrote:
| This is purely opinion but the "era of" something is over when it
| stops growing in popularity.
| samstave wrote:
| Kinda of poignant that it dovetails with the inflection of AI.
| DotaFan wrote:
| When I was a kid, we went for a sports trip far from my home
| town. As only geek in team, I've brought dozen of computer
| magazines with me. Oh, the memories.
| Agingcoder wrote:
| I recently bought a subscription to pcgamer uk pdf edition ( the
| website is I suspect deliberately unusable ) - much to my
| surprise, I enjoy reading it that way . I haven't bought a paper
| edition in years though.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| I used to love that mag and was an avid subscriber during my
| early to late teens.
|
| Some of their writers went on to create Rock Paper Shotgun
| which was one of the best blogs out there.
| donbrae wrote:
| Things are a bit healthier elsewhere: I was in a WHSmith here in
| Scotland about a month ago and there were three Linux magazines
| on the shelf. There are others, too, like Computeractive and
| Retro Gamer.
| leibnitz27 wrote:
| For me, the end of the computer magazine was the end of print Dr
| Dobbs. For years, it was a wonderful staple that was just there.
| The world's a sadder place for its loss. :(
| UberFly wrote:
| I still have my issue #1 of PC World. I hold on to it like a
| religious relic.
| monkeydust wrote:
| Still few here in UK, like PC Pro. Remember it all well like
| computer fairs and small little retail outlets selling ram,
| motherboards, GPUs. This is before PCWorld, Currys started
| selling completed packaged PCs. Fond memories
| dave7 wrote:
| Yes, long may PC Pro continue! I currently sub to the print
| versions of that and Edge (gaming coverage).
|
| I don't really care if I already knew the news as covered, it's
| much more I like to read their opinions on said news, I love
| the random stories from the "Real World Computing" section, and
| their reviews are a decent starting point when I'm considering
| something or asked to recommend, also giving an insight in to
| all sorts of areas I may otherwise not pay any attention to.
|
| edit: Also, I worked computer fairs every weekend back in the
| day, all over the North - Cheshire, Aintree, North Wales,
| Bradford/Leeds. Those were great times!
| lmedinas wrote:
| I buy from time to time the German Managazine C'T and i cannot
| hide the fact that lot's of information in the Magazine i already
| absorbed from one way or the other. In this day and age of
| internet, people get easily information through different
| channels (social media, websites, chat, etc...)
|
| I find the Magazine and the writers very professional but I
| cannot say it's worth for me to buy the Magazine nowadays.
| Applejinx wrote:
| I've got some Creative Computing and Byte stashed away (they're
| pretty shabby: these were not designed to get this old, even just
| put away somewhere. The paper deteriorates)
|
| I've got the Byte cover with the computer watch, into which is
| being inserted a tiny floppy disk. I do NOT have an Apple watch,
| but that's what I think of when the Apple watch crosses my mind,
| is that Byte magazine cover.
|
| We got there technically. Now, to rediscover the spirit of those
| days, when we imagined the future, shared, and found inspiration.
| epolanski wrote:
| I remember being 13 and buying these magazines. In depth reviews
| and explanations of technologies.
|
| Stuff like Byte was both deep, entertaining, well written and
| forward looking.
|
| Internet media never got to the same heights as printed media did
| when it comes to editing and packaging quality.
|
| That's not to say there haven't been great heights on the net
| too, as it allowed for new ways to communicate about technology
| (think https://ciechanow.ski/ great content and many more).
| Andrex wrote:
| It felt like forever from when I first saw a laptop in a
| magazine ad and wanting it, to eventually getting it Christmas
| 2005. But it was probably only like four years.
| unixhero wrote:
| Deep and wide is no longer fashionable
| timdietrich wrote:
| There's a nice archive of many of the popular computer magazines
| - including PC World, MacWorld, MacUser, Byte - available here:
| https://vintageapple.org
|
| Over the past few years, as magazines have gone from print to
| online-only, I've subscribed to some of them via Zinio (
| https://www.zinio.com ). They carry PCWorld, Maximum PC,
| Macworld, MacLife, and more. Their "reader" is nice, but I do
| wish it supported downloading the magazines as PDFs.
|
| One magazine that is available in print and online is MagPi
| magazine ( https://magpi.raspberrypi.com ). Its emphasis is on
| Raspberry Pi. You can download back issues for free, and the
| print version is often available at bookstores such as B&N.
| amelius wrote:
| Perhaps someone can train a generative AI on the old issues,
| and use it to create new issues based on YouTube tech channels
| and online forums.
| VincentEvans wrote:
| Bookmarked
| nilespotter wrote:
| 2600 is still in print
| jacquesm wrote:
| One great thing about software from magazines instead of GitHub
| is that you had to type it in and fix the mistakes. And those
| fixes taught you bit by bit what the code that you had typed in
| was actually doing. I learned more from the crashes than from the
| code!
| nashadelic wrote:
| True story: I was born in Saudi Arabia and the internet hadn't
| arrived. But I was deep into building games. I wanted to load
| .bmps in my game but I couldn't figure out the format. My dad had
| PC Mag from Ziff Davis press which had a small table explaining
| how the BMP format has first 2 bytes as 'BM' then 4 reserved
| bytes, followed by 2 byte width and 2 byte height, then 1024
| bytes for palette and the image array... I had to figure out how
| to decode everything but man, the 7th grader was so happy when an
| image I made was plotted on the TC DOS screen in VGA!
|
| I'm glad that era is gone. It took too long to learn. When I went
| to my cousins in Pakistan who had internet, he showed me Yahoo
| (google wasn't a thing yet) and the very first thing I searched
| for was File Formats, and there was an entire website that shows
| the format of every file with full details. I almost cried on how
| easy it was vs. how much hard I had to work.
| qingcharles wrote:
| When I was a kid in the 80s I wanted to write 3D games. The
| only way to find any information was going to libraries. I used
| to get my parents to drive me to all sorts of different towns
| just so I could rummage through their libraries hoping to find
| a computer book I could use!
|
| Then the Internet arrived for me in 1993 and suddenly
| everything I needed was right there. I feel you!
| abecedarius wrote:
| > Ever since I got my first home computer on Christmas morning,
| 1982
|
| Oh man, exactly the same. There must be millions of us. [Added:
| Wikipedia claims "By 1982, an estimated 621,000 home computers
| were in American households", which might not be up to date with
| Christmas, but still looks like a no.]
|
| (I started reading Byte in 1981, though. By the late 80s the best
| years for the magazines were clearly past.)
| lacrimacida wrote:
| >Oh man, exactly the same. There must be millions of us.
|
| It must have affected everyone minus the newest generation who
| learned all about computing online..
| benzible wrote:
| In the mid-80s I learned Apple II hi-res assembly language
| graphics from a series of articles in Creative Computing. Based
| on this, I wrote a tool in BASIC to spit out pre-shifted shape
| tables for use in games. As a high school kid without access to
| the Internet, this was the way to get access to knowledge that
| only professionals had.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| I learned a lot from computer magazines in the 80s. It's not
| really been the same since.
| curious_cat_163 wrote:
| I recall reading Spider magazine in Pakistan. It was a magazine
| about the internet, more than computers. It would have reviews
| for websites and articles about maintaining online privacy in the
| early 2000s.
|
| Later on, I contributed some articles to it. Don't know if it is
| still going.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| The Twitter account has been silent since April 2015
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