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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."
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
> it won't feature... epic Jerry Pournelle columns
Well, it has that going for it.
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.
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!
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
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)
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.
Christmas 1975 BYTE Cover - Computers: The Ultimate Toys. Digibarn has more BYTE covers from the '70s and '80s. Outstanding!
>>>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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.