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BYTE Is Coming Back
harrymcc writes "More than a dozen years after its death, BYTE magazine is still the most beloved computer magazine of all time — the one that employees of every other tech mag got used to being compared unfavorably with. And now it's being revived, in the form of a new BYTE.com. The new version isn't replicating the focus of the old BYTE — it's focused on the use of consumer tech products in a business environment — and I'm pretty positive it won't feature Robert Tinney's art or epic Jerry Pournelle columns. But I'm glad to see the legendary brand back in use rather than sitting in limbo."
just a nibble
So... sort of an Infoworld-lite, then? Ugh.
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
But I'm glad to see the legendary brand back in use rather than sitting in limbo."
I'm not excited since the only thing in common between the new and the old is the brand. We don't need yet another mag /blog/site that raves about how people use trendy electronics (mainly apple) in their lives.
So, it's going to be yet another useless publication in an already crowded arena? I mean, Dr. Dobbs is pretty much a parody of itself, and there's few print magazines that are worth the time investment to even open the magazine. What's this new iteration going to provide, other than a stark reminder of the mojo that Byte magazine no longer has?
Why? Seriously? If you're not going to bring back the whole point of an original magazine then why dump something on the market that's already covered by other publications. It would be like bringing back Commadore Compute, but without having the programs you could copy, edit, and modify for your own amusement. Argh.
But you know, I honestly think there could be a market for a revamp of things like that. Games/apps/etc, published either online or magazine, where you could show kids and get them involved in things like programming. Hell it worked for me.
Om, nomnomnom...
I thought the Computer Shopper was the most beloved computer magazine of all time.
I subscribed to Byte "back in the day" and was disgusted with its slide into irrelevance. More of the same will only further sully any respect I had for what it was in its heyday.
Don't anthropomorphize computers, they don't like it.
It's certainly nice to see the brand getting some use - too iconic a brand to let it go to waste - but this appears to be revival of the name and no more. Reading TFA, I can find only tenuous similarity between this and the original magazine; different focus, different target audience, by the chronological gap between this and the original, probably completely different staff - one might as well change "BYTE Is Coming Back" to "Another Magazine is Using the Name BYTE". As an aside, I wonder how much they're going to have to pay for a domain like byte.com.
There is a whole industry dedicated to trading on familiar names to sell new (and completely unrelated) ventures. Why waste years building credibility when you can buy it?
IOW, if its not the same BYTE, its not the same BYTE. Does anyone really care about the "brand" so much that they are excited to see it back in use regardless of what that use is?
In other words, somebody bought the domain name to byte.com and is now trying to drum up interest in a new website with content unrelated to the original magazine on the assertion that they have the same name. Fail.
I'm not missing Jerry Pournelle either, but the deep background articles that were THE killer feature of the dead tree publication now live on sites like acmqueue, arstechnica and others.
The king is dead, long live the king; shame on those pretending to take its throne by taking its name.
-- Home is where you eat your heart out.
No reference to Jerry Pournelle is complete without this classic from rec.humor.funny (originally posted on BIX by Edmund X. DeJesus):
Usees Column by
Gerry Pourwelle
When we finally got home from the monthly Rambling Writers Conference (this time in Djemaa-el-Fna), we found Fractal Manor's main hall shoulder deep in brand-new state-of-the-art totally free computer hardware and software for me to check out. Drat. I'll never get around to most of it, of course, and probably will end up dumpstering 90% or more. What I really need to properly handle all of the wonderful things companies send me absolutely free to review and enjoy with no obligation whatsoever on my part, is a trash compactor.
I thought I'd start by reconfiguring my main computer, the Hyena 986SXDXMCMXCIV. Right now the sectors on the hard disk run clockwise, but I heard a rumor that you can squeeze 0.2% more throughput by running them counterclockwise. It's worth the effort. Recommended.
I slid the shrink-wrap off version 7.126 of DiskMember Gold (I know, you thought I'd never upgrade from version 4.79, especially after all my bad-mouthing of versions 5.33 and 6.02, but what can I say? Only a Corinthian drinks kevis in a Veronese cantola.) and fired it up. No joy. I reread the documentation to no avail, then scanned the whole manual in, OCRed it, spell- checked the file and uploaded it to BIX with a question mark appended.
While I waited for a response, I tried the software out on the TriskaDeck 1313. This is the machine Bill Gibson uses when we collaborate. It loaded fine and ran fine, but it seems to have automatically moved every hard disk sector to a random location and erased all the File Allocation Tables. Luckily I had backed up the entire hard disk to a CD-ROM with the new BitByter 7000 CD-ROM Mastering Deck (only $40,000 and worth every penny. Recommended.) so in only 6 more hours I was back where I started.
While the disk was humming, I checked BIX with the Niebelungen Valkyrie we keep in a corner for when Sandy Solzhenitsyn is here writing. No answers yet.
On the chance that he might have some insight, I buzzed Bill Gates. He mumbled something about it probably being a hardware problem before excusing himself. That seemed plausible.
I called Jan Toady, president of Hyena, who indicated that a helicopter of ground-assault technical assistants was hovering near Fractal Manor 24 hours a day and that all I had to do was give the word and they'd parachute in. (Based on my own experience, I think Hyena offers the best service in the business, and not just because I mention their products every month in my column which millions of avid computer buyers read either. I bet you'd get the same service I do. Recommended.) I chuckled and said I'd try to puzzle it out a little more myself. He said okay and then talked me into accepting a free laptop with holographic display and telepathic mouse. A nice guy.
I also got Mike Spindler, Lou Gerstner and Ross Perot on a conference call, but except for a few offers on tractor trailers full of new equipment they couldn't help me.
My wife Svetlana (whose reading program can teach anyone with a $3000 computer how to read, and which is now available for PC-compatibles, Apples, Macintoshes and the Cray XMP for only $49.95 plus shipping and sales tax where applicable, have your MasterCard or VISA card ready and call 1-800-555-1212, operators standing by 24 hours a day) stuck her head in to say Hi.
That gave me the idea to try calling my sons for help. Number one son Bud is now Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but when I called him he was busy in the War Room with the Secretary of Defense and some darn nerve gas missile crisis. It's always something with those civilians. Second son Robbie was in the middle of performing emergency brain surgery on the President, but promised to get back to me when he had a breather. Chip was arguing a landmark civil rights case before the Supreme Court when he answered my beeper message, but he seemed to thi
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
I was unhappy when Byte died. I was left with only PC World and PC Magazine both of which suck. I have a new love in CPU magazine though.
> it won't feature... epic Jerry Pournelle columns
Well, it has that going for it.
...unless it has Jerry Pournelle, Steve Ciarcia and others in it. And yes, Tinney artwork on it. Get with the program if you want my subscription dollars. Or my eyeballs.
You aren't remembered for doing what is expected of you
I'm glad to see the legendary brand back in use rather than sitting in limbo
Why? If it's not going to be anything like what BYTE magazine was, then it's just a name - what's so special about that? The reason BYTE was great wasn't because it was called BYTE, it was because of the content and style it had - exactly what the new BYTE says it isn't going to have. Pointless, pointless, pointless.
Great news. Please let it be useful like Hacker Monthly and not just brand necrophilia...
~
~
It says "Profesional" in the title of the byte.com front page. I'm not optimistic.
it's focused on the use of consumer tech products in a business environment
Business managers should be expelled from the industry and blackballed for decisions like this.
There are hundreds - fucking hundreds of magazines that do this already. When some mossy-backed MBA decides to revive an old brand for a new product that nobody is going to buy, there should be a Guild of Historians who can notify the shareholders that the manager needs to be fired and sued.
Incompetent business decisions are bad enough; bad decisions that have been shown again and again to be bad are criminally negligent.
I'm glad to see the legendary brand back in use rather than sitting in limbo."
You are happy to see someone attempt to get attention by confusing consumers about a product by conflating it with a past one through reuse of the name? I mean I guess if the original Byte people were able to make some money selling the name to this new organization I am happy for them. I guess I am not so happy about them trying to sucker people. If they were trying to create a magazine with similar content and focus to old Byte and using the name for that I'd be happy.
Its kinda like I don't get all that excited when someone slaps Amiga on something that has nothing at all to do with C= and is in no way even reminiscent.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Well, since as TFS says, "The new version isn't replicating the focus of the old BYTE — it's focused on the use of consumer tech products in a business environment — and I'm pretty positive it won't feature Robert Tinney's art or epic Jerry Pournelle columns", than I agree with your sentiment. They can BYTE me.
That's a real byte in the ass; the magazine without all the things that made it great is bullshit, just another stupid tech blog featuring electronic bling.
The old BYTE magazine, now that I miss. In depth articles about hardware hacking, software hacking, phreaking, schematic diagrams, source code listings, etc., it was a true nerd's dream, which was why it was the one that "employees of every other tech mag got used to being compared unfavorably with."
I doubt I'll even like this reincarnation. Kind of like a doberman being reincarnated as a chihuahua.
Free Martian Whores!
This sounds like yet another gadget review site... Byte was great because it was a deep diving into the story and science of technology. It was about core technology: hardware, software, architechture, systems, etc... And it assumed the reader was smart and had strong technical knowlege. That's what made it so great, it was technology pron. It wasn't about gadgets, fads, and all that stuff that only a fanboy would care about.
"it's focused on the use of consumer tech products in a business environment"... That doesn't sound like the Byte I know and love.
Yes, I'm not sure why the author of TFS is glad to see the brand back. I couldn't care less about the BYTE brand, but I loved the BYTE content. Like the multi-page article about the new one micrometer process, looking at the history of process technology, how it has kept pace with Moore's Law, and how the new process worked. Yet another web site about consumer technology in the business world? Who cares?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
There is a marketing term for this - Zombie Brand. Basically a name has a certain recognition with people and companies want to capitalize on this. Rather than building their own brand equity, a new company wants to borrow this recognition from its target market.
Memorex is an example of this. They were bought and disbanded in the 80's only to later become an Imation brand in name only. Who (over the age of 30) doesn't remember the catch phrase "is it live? or is it Memorex". Imation wanted to tap into this to increase their profitability.
Heck, I could argue that Star Trek: TNG et all are guilty of this as well.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
For some reason, all I could think of as I read the summary was the following Simpsons quote:
While the old Byte is worth remembering, is this new website going to be anything like it? To me, Ars Technica is the Byte of today.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
If they aren't bringing back a retro style BYTE Magazine (a hardware persons monthly reference), why bother. Call it something else. If they brought a BYTE like publication back that was an electronic publication formatted for e-readers and tablets, then I would be excited.
I wrote for BYTE back in the mid-1980s. Nowadays, if I mention that to most people, they look at me curiously -- probably get the same reaction if I told them I had published articles in Colliers.
And, no, any current incarnation won't be the same as back then, but the personal computing industry has changed massively since then; it's been through at least two crashes (1988-90 and, of course, 2000-2004), and the technology is on a whole different level now -- both the hardware and the system software is less accessible than it was back then. The real barrier, though, is the advertisers. BYTE in the mid-80s sometimes got up to 600 pages per issue total size, because there were so many advertisers willing to chase after its readers. (Cf. the 1988-90 tech crash.) Trying to create an updated version of that BYTE might be possible, but I'm not sure who would advertise in it. ..bruce..
Bruce F. Webster (brucefwebster.com)
"Details" magazine went through this twice. The original Details magazine, in the 1980s, was targeted to the hip New York City club crowd. The typical Details reader had probably met Madonna before she was famous, while dancing at Danceteria or Area. The people mentioned in Details read Details to see what their friends were doing. Ads were for little boutiques in SoHo.
Today's "Details" is like GQ or Esquire, with a heavy emphasis on shopping.
Byte is doing much the same thing.
The original Byte was about hardware/software computer development. At that time, it was a useful introduction to interesting technologies, and remained so for many years. At some point, it switched to being just another product review magazine, which was not what the original audience was interested in. Since there were dozens of these already being published, it just faded into the background as just another generic joystick review magazine, as happened to Creative Computing some years earlier. There was nothing innovative or unique about it to attract anyone to it.
Sounds like they are trying to revive a dull, boring, copycat magazine, and are hoping that using an old name will attract enough curious readers long enough to reap some advertising dollars.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
My favorite how-to was the article that described changing io.sys & command.com so that it would load altcfg.sys instead of config.sys (thus making virus that altered config.sys/autoexec.bat useless).
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Christmas 1975 BYTE Cover - Computers: The Ultimate Toys. Digibarn has more BYTE covers from the '70s and '80s. Outstanding!
It's because back then, people into computers generally understood those things and were fairly technically literate. Now, they generally don't, and they're mostly technically illiterate. Like most things, computing got dumbed down when it got trendy among Joe Sixpack. It stopped being about anythin with any depth, and started being about superficial consumer culture.
No surprise then that this is what the media caters to.
It's also why people are no longer capable of making informed decisions about technology. They don't understand it. It's magic to them, so anything that requires thought about its impact is right over their heads.
>>>the magazine without all the things that made it great is bullshit,
Pretty much. Like reviving the Bionic Woman or Knight Rider and then changing the whole premise of the show. Of course that worked in the case of Battlestar Galactica, but when you're already dealing with a good show (or magazine) there's no point abandoning it.
BTW I've never read Byte. At least not that I remember. My main two addictions were RUN for commodore VICs and 64s plus AmigaWorld (essentially the same as RUN but for 32-bit instead of 8-bit machines). I don't think BYTE would have interested me since I never owned an IBM PC at the time, and from what I remember that was it's main focus. Another magazine I remember was COMPUTE's Gazette but never subscribed to it since it didn't feel as polished or useful as RUN.
So: Just curious: What killed the magazine? - I see Jerry Pournelle is still writing his columns. Love his stories; never read his tech columns: http://www.chaosmanorreviews.com/
RUN (1984-93) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Run_magazine
AmigaWorld (archives) http://amr.abime.net/issues_30
Byte http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte_(magazine)
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
About the same as Atari making a comeback, if by comeback you mean it's a meaningless label slapped onto random games by Ubisoft.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
CRC RCA HP Zenith, Magnavox. Once great companies built on top of legendary innovations and engineer. Now hollow shells with only their names to sell products-- usually products distant from their original expertise.
(Anyone even realize that CRC means chemical rubber company-- yet the main product is integral tables)
et TU Byte.
Will they have program listing in Basic, or teach me handshaking on a RS232 port. I suspect not. it's just a gadget review mag.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
...they finally got enough material for some articles, or is it going to be 800 pages of ads again?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Because of the vast changes in computers' capabilities since BYTE magazine ended its run, they've decided to change the name to "BYTE presents: Gibioctet"
Bow-ties are cool.
The branding is lame, but the intention might have some wiggle room before being condemned to death. I have tried several times to find open source sites that were trying to bridge the knowledge gap with new Linux users. It is tough. If the subject is tackled with the same underlying educational bent as the old pub then maybe it will prove useful.
The biggest WIN would be if they could stake out the meeting ground between the uneducated user and the over-matched admin. I don't think anyone is doing this particularly well right now.
Focusing on threes would be good. A fluffy Esther Schindler type buzz-fest for the C level, an insightful feature/spec commentary for the implementors, and a consumer empowerment style review of associated devices/products for the honey-bees. Then you tie it together with well staffed forums.
That would be refreshing, right? If anything, a quick swim through the more technical parts of the forums could put some pie-in-the-sky C* types into their places ;) It can be healthy to clack decision makers in the balls on occasion.
"focused on the use of consumer tech products in a business environment"
do we really need more of this? and will they be performing in-depth analysis of how much lost time & productivity comes with misappropriating consumer tech in a workplace?
While I greatly enjoyed the August issues of the magazine (they were all about languages) and I still have the 1981 August issue on Smalltalk, dead trees are so last millennium.
We have much richer offerings available over the internet.
I predict a six month run before another bankruptcy.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
The new Byte will be written who were not born when the old one was in print. I lived in Africa ... we read Byte there ... we also read Compute! and of course Atari Format ... the code listings were awesome. In 1983 there was also an article on how to build a small robot controlled by Basic ...
****
No really, who really cares about 'yet another consumer magazine' that is full of either pure ads, or fake reviews or 'placement' type of advertisements? Don't we have enough of those already?
I still remember when Byte was a great technical magazine and was something to look forward to getting in the mail box. I also remember its slow painful decent into "consumer electronics", which was really disappointing for engineering types like myself. It would be nice to see a return to the old ways, but even then, i think the 'magic' is long gone in the industry as a whole.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
This is just wrong.
Its going to be a product review rag and avoid computers except as object of idolatry.
Nobody needs this magazine and trees are going to die unnecessarily.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
BYTE? No, not my favorite. I reached every month for Computer Shopper. Sure, it was 95% (or more) ads, but that was the point. I don't remember a single article I even read in it - really the articles in there were about as memorable as the ones in Playboy - but I found plenty of good deals on RAM and hard drives through that magazine.
And as an added bonus, a single year's worth of Computer Shopper was a stack tall enough to make an end table...
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Arguments that technical people (or that people in general) used to be smarter or more technologically capable really should make an effort to explain away the Flynn effect.
The technological products available to the average consumer have a level of sophistication that would have been unimaginable even to Byte's earliest readers. Technological products require more in the way of abstract reasoning, and today's consumers (especially the young ones) seem equal to the task. Those who confuse remembering zillions of details (like HEX representations of opcodes) with being intelligent might not agree, but it's because they are confused, not because they are smart.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be. It never was.
Micro Cornucopia on the iPad? Let sleeping dogs lie...
To put a witty saying into 120 characters, jst rmv ll th vwls.
getting my EE in college. Thanks Steve!
I came across this book around 1993 / 1994. It was a thing of beauty - pretty much the entire history of personal computing up until that point. It didn't just contain flashy articles sure to bring in the mass market readers, but pieces that provided an amazing amount of perspective on the progression of hardware and software. I seem to recall stories on exciting new 20MB hard drives, (failed) networking standards, processor development, along with the usual "Launch of the Mac", "Launch of the IBM PC" and previews of the sure-to-be-amazing PCjr. My only gripe was that the collection of old computer ads were pretty much illegible photocopies.
The technological products available to the average consumer have a level of sophistication that would have been unimaginable even to Byte's earliest readers.
While this may well be true, you're next sentence.
Technological products require more in the way of abstract reasoning, and today's consumers (especially the young ones) seem equal to the task.
What? The iPhone / Facebook / Modern web browser / overly engineered washing machine with the 'computer' readout requires 'abstract reasoning' beyond very basic English? Abstract as in painting or are you using another definition? Those examples (and countless others) are popular because they are so simple that my Labrador Retriever can use them. Maybe Twitter requires some fairly interesting rationalization as to why anyone is interested in your life, 140 characters at a time, but 'abstract' reasoning, it isn't.
Those who confuse remembering zillions of details (like HEX representations of opcodes) with being intelligent might not agree, but it's because they are confused, not because they are smart.
I think you're you're confused. Now, perhaps those designers of these technological wonders have training well beyond those of the average BYTE reader of days yore, but the users, not so much. Not by a long shot.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
BYTE covered pretty much everything concerning computing, from the Commodore 64 to supercomputers to NAND and NOR gates, etc. It was kind of a Dr. Dobbs Lite.
Free Martian Whores!
Gawwwd! Jerry Pournelle was one of the major reasons I canceled my subscription to Byte. The fact that the content was turning to drivel and the size of one issue ballooned to the same size as six issues from the early days, due to ads, was another.
Why on earth would anyone want to pay money to read Pournelle's whining about how someone didn't give him enough free stuff; his gloating about how much free stuff he got; the schilling for his kid's for fee software; and his ragging on people trying to make a living off their software by selling it?
In fact, in 1995 when Internet World started to have a Pournelle column, I wrote them and said that if they continued to push his drivel I would not only cancel my subscription, but would recommend to everyone I knew to not read their rag. I doubt very much that I was the prime cause, but enough other people must have felt the same way I did because they dropped his column.
I have Byte magazine from the first issue up into the early 1990's. They should leave the name to rest in peace.
Maybe they should bring back COMPUTE magazine, too. And the magazine could do really cool things like discuss computers. That's a great idea for the internet, no?
You, of course, understood the Tectonic shift that social media represented and could know at at exactly what level to pitch it so that people who had never used such a thing before could see right away what to do with it. That's why you have six billion dollars and Mark Zuckerberg doesn't.
As to your Labrador retriever and modern computer interfaces and the concept of abstraction, you might note that even very basic English is missing from most interfaces. At the top of my Chrome browser, there is a series of icons and no words. If you hover on the icon, you can get English words. In order to do that, your Labrador retriever would have to master a number of tasks: knowing to look at the top of the page in the first place and that that is a common feature of browsers, hovering over the task as a possible way of getting some suggestion as to what the icon might do, and some system of abstract reasoning that approximates what IQ tests measure so that your Labrador retriever doesn't have to check out each icon randomly each time (what class of tasks would be suggested by a wrench, for example).
I don't think my generation, which thought it really grooved on techie details, would even have presented the opportunity that Mr. Zuckerberg had for getting rich so fast because it wouldn't have grasped the point, a phenomenon that delayed widespread acceptance of the fax machine until it was largely irrelevant.
I don't know why I'm bothering with this. I think it's hopeless.
When I first rad this guy's columns I never knew he was a real writer--I thought his was a comedy bit, sort of like Andy Rooney, where some crazy old guy who kinds knows stuff explains in great and tedious detail how he tried to get something to work and every step he took to do it. Kind of like if the crazy person on the bus who sit next to you yammered on about home networking and defunct printer drivers instead of the goblins who keep stealing his liquor and getting him fired.
Jerry was incredible in his day. I loved reading his columns. It was one of the main reasons for doing so. When they went paywall that destroyed them. Jerry today has his own blog but it seems to be to extreme for my tastes now, where he talks politics often more than technology and he expects everyone to believe him--to take him at his word.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
It does make me wonder, though, what happened to actual technical computing magazines. Sure, there are a few obscure Linux and similar ones out there, but getting into the nuts and bolts of a computer was(and still is) most of the fun. I suspect that instead of seeing "setting up your own home CNC machine for $500", we'll see yet another review and ad-driven site like all of the rest.
Actually I KNOW that we'll see that as the parent company to all of this is responsible for degrading education to the point where older books from the 70s actually do a better job of giving you usable facts and knowledge. I've seen the "state approved" textbooks my son is forced to learn from and they are nearly useless - full of factoids and snippets and tons of overblown pictures. You could physically fit ten paragraphs in the same space of actual information. But I guess that would require reading... I've tried to use the math programs online that he's forced to use for homework and they're a complete joke as well. You spend twice the time just fighting the interface to put in your answer as it would take to just write it down on a piece of paper.
It's becoming ever harder to obtain real knowledge because the media, books, and computers have all been dumbed-down to the level of a twelve year old. All the media you can ever want or need at your fingertips, but none of it worth anything more than entertainment for simpletons.
I don't care what's new or what's coming or what's shiny. I want to find new ways to use what I already have. I'm tired of having to look stuff up online and then finding it just referencing a book or article somewhere. "You can do really amazing things with your own home based CNC machine" ( essentially what that article here on slashdot this last week was going on about) yet all it did was point to a commercial site. No plans or parts list, no code, no anything about telling you about doing it yourself. Just where to maybe open your wallet and pray it comes to market for a 200% markup over cost.
byte.com will be compared unfavorably to byte.
Seriously without that art, and Jerry, and changing it's focus. It is NOT the same magazine.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Wow /. is a tough crowd (Score:0 Troll) - the masses interpret things in the negative for the most part. "BYTE ME" could have easily meant "I like Byte, sign me up" - I can see why that would score me a zero, but I'm a little surprised considering folks on here love to be so witty. Wasn't meant to read 'bite me'. Merry Christmas! and lighten up!!! :) (not a troll)
I avidly read Byte back in the day. There was actually a period in the early 80's when it was part of my job! That and Creative Computing, InfoWorld, Datamation, and a few others.
But why bring it back now? It was what it was, yes, with Tinney's artwork, and Circuit Cellar, and Pournelle (what a blowhard!).
I really looked forward to each new issue back then, but please, let it R.I.P.
I loved Byte -- I truly did. Indeed, it was part of the reason that I moved to the publishing powerhouse of Peterborough, NH. Yeah, the town is one of those don't-blink-or-you'll-miss-it towns, but it housed IDG's suite (A+, AmigaWorld, and others), 73 Magazine (the Ham/CB radio rag), several vertical market magazines (one of which, Sensors Magazine, still exists, and is edited by my ex-GF), and, yes, Byte.
I used to hang out with one of the founders, Carl Helmers. Nice enough guy, but a classic Asperger's person: don't even start a conversation if you have any plans, ever. He'll talk your ear off, and there's essentially never a graceful way to put in the words, "Oh, my! Midnight! Look at that!"
The magazine, itself, was such a suite of talent. Hardware columns, first peeks, and a boatload of knowledge. About the only thing I *didn't* like was Pournelle's column; while I even sometimes agreed, he was so pretentious and paternalistic that it drove me bonkers. Made me wonder how it was that he could co-create SF I actually enjoyed. (Though I never did enjoy his solo stuff.)
When Byte shut its doors, there was a lot of shock and disappointment. It had been doing well; there was talk that it was competing with some of McGraw-Hill's other holdings, and that they might have chosen to consolidate. Whatever the reason, I don't think its storied past holds much of a future as Yet Another Consumer Electronics Magazine.
But golly, I'd love to be wrong.
Oh no I remember articles on stuff like how to interface stepper-motors to an RS232 serial port to connect to an etch-a-stretch and program listing to make the whole gizmo work as a plotter on a 6502 or making a CPU card using a Z8000 for the S100 bus. There were focus issues on new-fangled Operating systems like Unix, Artificial Intellegence, Lisp, Forth, Pascal, C; they were all over the place in the golden age. The IBM PC did take them down the slippery slope, but they fell from a great height.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
The other thing I loved about Jerry, and everyone else was things that could break, would break when he was around. If you wrote a program or made some hardware and sent it to Chaos Manner and it functioned properly there, you were golden because it would function anywhere.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
The reminder of Byte's good parts - Jerry Pournelle also made me remember Steve Ciarcia.
Steve and Jerry are still around.
Steve's URL is http://www.circuitcellar.com/
Jerry's URL is http://www.jerrypournelle.com/
I took the time to subscribe to circuit cellar and to Jerry's site. They are good writers and deserve our support.
Peter AI6PG
That's why MAKE magazine still goes on in dead tree format? And elektor?
Steve Ciarcia's site is still going now almost two decades post-BYTE, and they still publish a dead tree issue.
BYTE had no mojo left long before BYTE quit publishing, all this sounds like is another cheap exploitation of another once beloved brand name.
In depth articles about hardware hacking, software hacking, phreaking, schematic diagrams, source code listings, etc., it was a true nerd's dream, which was why it was the one that "employees of every other tech mag got used to being compared unfavorably with."
Same here. The two columns I looked forward to the most was Jerry Pournelle's "Chaos Manor" and Steve Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar. Luckily he started his magazine.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I never owned an IBM PC at the time, and from what I remember that was it's main focus
Not at all. Byte's focus was the Home Brew computer club audience. Even after IBM released the PC Byte remained focused on homebrews, hardware and software. Steve Ciarcia's column, back then it was a column not a separate magazine, was an example.
Another magazine I remember was COMPUTE's Gazette
I read it too, along with "AmigaWorld", Computer Shopper, Interface Age, and Creative Computing.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Just reviving the name means nothing. And I don't think there's a chance they will revive the spirit of BYTE.
Robert Tinney is the touchstone. BYTE went downhill the day they stopped running Tinney's lovely cover art and suddenly started putting big ad-like photos of computers on the cover.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
It does make me wonder, though, what happened to actual technical computing magazines. Sure, there are a few obscure Linux and similar ones out there, but getting into the nuts and bolts of a computer was(and still is) most of the fun. I suspect that instead of seeing "setting up your own home CNC machine for $500", we'll see yet another review and ad-driven site like all of the rest.
Though it's not focused on computers, Makezine is a good maker zine for the technical crowd. The same company also prints Craftzine for the crafts aficionado.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
No thanks, I'm waiting for CC.
Jerry Pournelle was one of the major reasons I canceled my subscription to Byte.
You are the first reader of Byte I've heard didn't like "Chaos Manor". Jerry Pournelle's column as well as Steve Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar were 2 columns that kept me reading "Byte".
Why on earth would anyone want to pay money to read Pournelle's whining about how someone didn't give him enough free stuff;
I don't recall any of that, what I recall was how his teacher wife used computers to help her teach.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
If you're not going to bring back the whole point of an original magazine then why dump something on the market that's already covered by other publications>
Why? To try to make money off the old name. If for nothing more than curiosity I'll peruse the new print magazine and if I like it I'll buy it off the stand. Then after several months if I still like it I may subscribe.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I agree with you. Pournelle was a long winded whiner and I never really understood what his "fans" saw in his column. While he did have some useful content, he sure took the long path to get to the it.
Really miss Micro Cornucopia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Cornucopia) more than Byte. Sadly they folded just little over a year after I discovered them.
I love Steve Levy's book. I'll tell, not ask or suggest but tell, those who use the word "hacker" improperly to read that book to understand how real hackers are, explorers and makers.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
>I couldn't care less about the BYTE brand, but I loved the BYTE content.
Exactly.
It's not Pournelle & Ciarca that you need, but the type of content they wrote.
My first encounter with Byte was reading an article on adding an external stack to your 8008, giving it "most" of the difference between the 8008 and the 8080, for a mere 20 (30?) chips . . .
[for the kids, the 8008 was an 8 bit, but with only a 14 bit address space, and a 7(?) layer internal stack (two bytes each). The 8080 instead had a pointer to a stack in memory, with no fixed depth limit].
No, we weren't much likelier to build most of the things than we were to build a 100mpg car from the article from a Spitfire chassis, small tractor engine, and fiberglass molds as described in a Popular Mechanics article, but they took us through what it *would* take to do it.
hawk
>While this may well be true, you're next sentence.
Now *that* is a mishomophonia we don't see very often; it's almost universally the other direction . . . :)
bawm
>I don't think BYTE would have interested me since I never owned an IBM PC at the time,
>and from what I remember that was it's main focus
That was very late BYTE.
Byte made it's mark in the 8 bit days, when the 4 bits were still worth discussing at times.
hawk
Does anyone else remember when it was published by Wanye Greene? And the story about how his soon-to-be-ex-wife and the managing editor packed up Byte Magazine and moved it down the street one night? According to Wayne, she basically stole it and then got it in the divorce settlement, if I recall the story correctly. Of course, old Wayne himself was a piece of work, too. Someplace in my stash I have issue #1 of Byte, still with the mailing wrapper.
From Wiki...
"In 1989 (seven years after the first film), Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), an innovative software engineer and the CEO of ENCOM International, tells his seven-year-old son Sam (Owen Best) about a new "digital frontier" he has created called The Grid..."
Oh ... you mean that's not the Flynn effect you mean.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
It's the Teal Deer problem.
(Humor)
"You have so many words in your post. It's too hard to read.
Here is a nice informative graphic to look at."
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y268/torihouji/tldr.jpg
(/Humor)
Isn't the most famous joke here not to read the articles?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Whilst I regularly skim Ars technica I don't think you can really call its articles 'in depth'.
And some are just painfully 'wrong by omission'.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
I'll take a wait-and-see approach before praising or condemning it so soon after its rebirth. A journal has to find its place and its readership, and the new BYTE will likely morph to some extent before it settles down ("consumer tech products in a business envronment" is a bit nebulous).
What I have not missed about the old BYTE is hanging on my wall. Framed prints of Robert Tinney's excellent art, signed and numbered. I just wish I had bought a few more of them when they were available.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
There should be modding for -1 Scary. Your post gave me a frightnening sensation, I couldn't even let myself have a mental image of it.
ics
Damn you kids and your fancy object-oriented garbage-collected languages!!! back in the day, we had to account for every BYTE allocated!!!!
And, yeah, they'd pretty much become like every other boring computer magazine of the time when they did die. "A review of the top 20 dot matrix printers for business" --BO-ring!
Zombie Rag - you know what happens when you bring something back from the dead. It'll sorta resemble the original, but it'll have doll eyes (pretty pics with no meat behind them,) and an insatiable appetite for brains (advertising.) Might even have an aggressive attitude toward non-subscribers (Top 10 Ways to Get Into IT Management.)
>>>I have Byte magazine from the first issue up into the early 1990's.
Atariage.com is in process of scanning BYTE into its computer for display on the web. Please go to the forums and post a message volunteering to help out.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Thanks for the link. :)
I haven't subscribed yet but when I can I plan to. Every issue is filled with maker projects, of different types. Although I haven't started any projects yet one I want to do combines different areas of interest I have, Garduino combines Gardening with an Arduino microcontroller board. Using simple sensors, such as nails stuck in dirt, to measure water and lighting and if needed the circuit activates servos to provide water or light. Why this project? Because I love electronics as well as gardening.
That site's more interesting than the last month of Slashdot and Toms Hardware combined.
I don't follow Toms Hardware but Slashdot doesn't have good how-to articles. The closest I've seen are Ask Slashdot questions.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?