The Twelve Greatest Defunct Tech Magazines Ever
By Harry McCracken | Thursday, November 20, 2008 at 6:17 am
Computer Gaming World (1981-2008)
Publishers: Russell Sipe, Ziff-Davis
What made it special: In its early days, it was an uncommonly thoughtful, earnest magazine about the nascent world of electronic gaming. Then it became both authoritative and wildly successful–a sort of PC Magazine of gaming that reached 500 pages an issue.
Random factoid: The presence of a “World” in a tech magazine’s name is most often a cue that it’s published by IDG (see: PC World, Macworld, Computerworld, InfoWorld, Network World, Amiga World, NeXTWorld, and others). CGW was the one World published by IDG nemesis Ziff-Davis–it’s sort of as if Burger King had introduced a sandwich called the McWhopper.
The final days: In 2006, Ziff signed a licensing deal with Microsoft and rechristened CGW as Games for Windows: The Official Magazine. That bought it another couple of years in dead-tree form, but it was a shame to see one of the great names of gaming journalism disappear.
Current whereabouts: Games for Windows lives on as a component of Ziff’s 1Up gaming network.
.info (1983-1992)
Publisher: Info Publications
What made it special: .info–originally devoted to the Commodore 64, although it later shifted emphasis to Commodore’s Amiga–was a delightfully nerdy, feisty magazine with passion for the topic that oozed off of every page. It was less slick than competitors such as IDG’s Amigaworld, but its home-made feel helped make it engaging.
Random factoid: Back when desktop publishing was a hot topic but most computer magazines were still put together with old-school equipment like typesetting machines, .info practiced what it preached: It was an Amiga magazine that was published using Amigas.
The final days: .info was small and independent, and when Commodore ran into trouble, so did it. (A larger publishing house might have shifted its emphasis to PCs, but an .info that wasn’t about Commodore machines wouild have been unthinkable.) When it closed, its assets were sold off at an auction.
Current whereabouts: Bryce, a comic strip drawn on a computer back when that was a radical notion, is available for your perusal here.
MacUser (1985-1997)
Publishers: Dennis Publishing, Ziff-Davis
What made it special: In the 1980s, the Mac platform supported two of the best computer magazines, period. Macworld was kinda weighty and high-minded. MacUser was more informal–maybe even a little snarky, although I don’t think the word ecisted yet. The competition clearly made both mags better and left Mac users richer.
Random factoid: Strangely enough, the British edition of MacUser was never discontinued.
The final days: In 1997, some very smart people were very confident that Apple Computer was on its deathbed, which made it tough for the market to sustain two publications. In a rare instance of coopitition, archrivals Ziff-Davis and IDG merged MacUser and Macworld into one publication called Macworld, which they jointly owned for a spell. The MacUser crew who stayed on included Jason Snell, a former intern who eventually wound up as editorial director of today’s Macworld.
Current whereabouts: IDG eventually revived the MacUser name and URL for a successful new Apple blog that’s a good read.
PC/Computing (1988-2002)
Publisher: Ziff-Davis
What made it special: Mostly that it was a well-done computer magazine, with especially good how-to content. (Early issues also included articles by celebs such as Paul Theroux and John Updike–for a long time, every tech magazine went through a period of publishing stuff by noted authors before learning that nobody wants to read it.)
Random self-indulgent factoid: Longtime Editor-in-Chief Paul Somerson was a student of my father’s at Reed College in Portland, Oregon in the 1960s.
The final days: In 2000, when magazines about the dot com boom were…well, booming, Ziff-Davis revamped PC/Computing into one and gave it a new moniker with more words than I’ve ever seen in a magazine title before or since: Ziff Davis Smart Business for the New Economy. It didn’t help, proving for the umpteenth time that changing the name and focus of magazines never helps and usually hurts.
Current whereabouts: It’s unusually dead for a dead computer magazine-go to PCComputing.com, and you’ll get an ignominious “Directory Listing Denied” error. At least the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine preserves some of its history.
Upside (1989-2002)
Publisher: Upside
What made it special: Everybody thinks that “new economy” magazines were a byproduct of the dot com boom that got rolling in the mid-1990s. Everybody is wrong. Upside was the original new economy magazine, and it launched in the 1980s, when the Internet was still an obscure place where commercial activity was forbidden. It was a wonderful, wickedly funny magazine, too–especially in its early days, when it drew obvious inspiration from the then-red hot Spy and applied it to the tech world.
Random factoid: In its later years, Upside‘s CEO was David Bunnell–the same guy who founded PC Magazine, PC World, and Macworld.
The final days: Upside may have predated the dot-com boom, but it couldn’t survive the dot-com bust: It was annihilated along with The Industry Standard, Red Herring, and the original version of Business 2.0.
Current whereabouts: Very dead indeed–Upside.com goes nowhere.
More (but not much) at Wikipedia.
The Industry Standard (1998-2001)
Publisher: IDG
What made it special: The Industry Standard neatly encapsulated the roller-coaster ride of the original dot-com boom it covered in printed form. Its well-reported pages are the definitive record of the era, from its humble origins to the period of absurdly great expectations and overinvestment in companies with no business model to the post-millennial collapse.
Random factoid: At its highpoint, so many startups wanted to advertise in the Standard that a spinoff, Grok, was launched to handle overflow ads.
The final days: In the end, the Standard became the story it covered: In 2000, it sold the most ad pages of any magazine in America. And in 2001, as the companies it covered were dying all around it, it went bankrupt and ceased publication.
Current whereabouts: In 2008. IDG revived the Industry Standard name for an all-new site that features news, blogs, and a futures market that lets folks wager on such technology questions as whether Bill Gates will be Barack Obama’s CTO.
More at Wikipedia.
Any memories of any of the above magazines? And which great tech publications did I forget?
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Cool toys and Gadgets » Blog Archive » Popular Electronics 1954-1985 Says:
November 20th, 2008 at 12:41 pm[…] a round up of the “greatest defunct tech mags ever” – it includes one of my favorites, Popular Electronics…. Popular Electronics (1954-1985) – What […]
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November 21st, 2008 at 4:45 am[…] * In mourning over the death of PC World’s print version, Technologizer presents the 12 greatest defunt tech mags. […]
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November 22nd, 2008 at 12:30 am[…] The Twelve Greatest Defunct Tech Magazines Ever As much as I love magazines, there are some areas that just do better on the web. Technology is one of them. (tags: technology magazines publishing) […]
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December 21st, 2008 at 2:11 pm[…] The Twelve Greatest Defunct Tech Magazines Ever […]
November 20th, 2008 at 6:30 am
Creative Computing was brilliant, but unfortunately I only have a few issues.
You missed Boardwatch:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boardwatch
Doctor Dobbs Journal used to be good in the early days. I don’t subscribe any more. Ditto for Personal Computer World.
November 20th, 2008 at 6:37 am
My vote goes to Computer Languages.
November 20th, 2008 at 6:48 am
I know several people who would put ZD’s “Corporate Computing” on that list. (It closed in… 1993? thereabouts?)
November 20th, 2008 at 7:07 am
What about PC Magazine? http://www.pcmech.com/article/bye-bye-pc-magazine/
November 20th, 2008 at 7:10 am
This is a great list. One that I remember subscribing to and really enjoying during the bubble was Yahoo! Internet Life. Not incredibly deep technically, but it was a great guide to finding quality content and applications on the web before sites like Hacker News and Digg were around.
November 20th, 2008 at 7:11 am
What about Datamation?
In the late 60s it was the ONLY magazine out there.
November 20th, 2008 at 7:12 am
What about FamilyPC? and Access Internet Magazine? Those mags rocked… (but i’m biased.)
November 20th, 2008 at 7:21 am
What about “Kilobaud”?
November 20th, 2008 at 7:22 am
What about Boardwatch?
November 20th, 2008 at 7:26 am
Upside as a tech magazine? Well, ok. But I think the short lived Windows User, 1992-93, should be on the list, which I thought broke new ground in hands on product reviews.
November 20th, 2008 at 8:32 am
what about nibble and softwalk?
November 20th, 2008 at 8:40 am
I think everyone here seems to have forgotten Amiga Power. A completely unique magazine, and a cult classic.
November 20th, 2008 at 8:54 am
As a former Upside staffer (there are lots of us scattered around), it’s great to see it made your list. It was fun while it lasted.
November 20th, 2008 at 9:14 am
Upside had a hilarious ‘enemies list’ issue. I think they so severely ticked off the industry that it may have ended up costing them ad revenue.
November 20th, 2008 at 9:33 am
You also missed Boot Magazine, which is relatively recent (Started in 96 I think). In it’s earliest form, before morphing into MaximumPC, it was a must read for computer performance geeks.
November 20th, 2008 at 9:40 am
What about Business 2.0?
November 20th, 2008 at 9:44 am
I suppose Computer Shopper doesn’t count because it was mostly about the ads, but it certainly has a place on the list of personal computer magazines that I miss.
November 20th, 2008 at 9:45 am
I remember reading the Byte editorial when Windows 3.0 was launched. They had thoroughly tested the new product, and were convinced that it would completely revolutionise the PC environment.
They were spot-on with that call – as they were so often.
November 20th, 2008 at 10:01 am
Oh sure — commodore represented, but no Atari? Where’s ANTIC Magazine on this list? đ
November 20th, 2008 at 10:08 am
Some other magazines that might make the list:
– CUJ – not exactly dead, but got merged with DDJ (Dr. Dobbs Journal).
– VBPJ – Visual Basic Programmer’s Journal
Read some issues, all 3 were very good in the same spirit as BYTE and others were earlier – with lots of code listings and technical discussions.
C++ Report – again, very good, IMO.
November 20th, 2008 at 10:21 am
Yeah, Compute! and Creative Computing were regular reads as a kid so we could type in games for our Atari 400 / 800’s – until one you missed came out, Analog. Unlike the BASIC programs that you could enter, Analog printed the machine code HEX characters with checksums at the end of each line. We’d spend hours typing in pages of the characters – but the results were well worth it – games that rivaled Tempest and others. I subscribed to Compute and Analog. Wish I still had ’em for nostalga’s sake.
November 20th, 2008 at 10:47 am
A moment of silence for a few others: The Net (Future), Computer Life (Ziff), Computer Currents, Publish! (formerly IDG, later spun off) … and does anyone remember “Infobahn”?
November 20th, 2008 at 11:04 am
But but but… you didn’t mention CD-ROM Today. (And yes, that is a good thing.) Which became Boot, which became Maximum PC, which against all odds is still publishing.
Strangely, I only wrote for two of the pubs Harry mentions (one of whom, Infoworld, I still write for online — more than ever, actually).
The only one I mourn is Industry Standard (the other one I wrote for). That was a really good book, done in by a market crash and its founders’ own hubris. (One of whom runs the blogging empire that Technologizer is part of, am I right, Harry?)
Others gone, for better or worse: Time Digital, which morphed into On magazine, then went bye bye.
Business 2.0, which merged with… oh god, what was it? I’m having a brain glitch.
And who could forget NeXT Magazine (about Steve Jobs’ post Apple computer). Oh right — everyone.
Fun post, Harry. Thanks for the stumble down memory lane.
dt
November 20th, 2008 at 11:46 am
Probably more science related, but Omni should be on the list
November 20th, 2008 at 11:51 am
Does that list ever bring back some memories. Especially the Byte magazines, I remember buying the last one published just as a keepsake.
November 20th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
Such power user snobs! Only that explains why Popular Computing was left out. But this sister publication to Byte, meant for real people who were getting into computing (and not tied to a platform, its downfall) did some excellent journalism. Michael Miller began there. Jerry Pournelle wrote a column there. Jonathan Sacks (later a bigwig AOL exec) worked there. Oh, and I wrote a column there, too, as well as a scatching smackdown of the PCjr. (IBM didn’t warm to the story–was it my calling it “braindead,” or the observation that “the PCjr has the smell of death about it”?) Anyone else remember PopCo?
November 20th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
What about Mondo2000 ???? That was the BEST mag!!!
And Wired. Wired was a cool rag too. Too bad it died.
November 20th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
I think Dan Tynan is struggling for the ever-forgettable Time Inc.’s “eCompany Now” – that’s what the original Business 2.0 merged with/became. (archived: http://www.viviente.com/ecompany/WebWeekly.htm) — and yes, of course, a toast to Mondo2000!
November 20th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
You forgot Business 2.0. It started out interesting, but it took a real turn for the year in its last two years. Telling that its final cover, in 2007, was predicting a housing boom. Hey, if you’re going to be so damn far off topic, you better be right. Instead it would have been laughed out of the universe if Time Inc. hadn’t, finally, made the decision to put it out of its misery.
November 20th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
B 2.0 sucked. It was just outright baffling. It’s like the entire staff was on crack for the last year, or so, of it’s existence. Never failed to be just outright off key.
November 20th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Catching up on some of these comments (which I’m loving),
@Steven Levy Gee, if I’d of Popular Computing I might have included it–I was a regular reader, and bought the first computer I paid for with my own money (an Atari 400) based partially on its review.
@Tim I did think of Antic–it didn’t make the list, but I was a fan.
@woz Softwalk? Softalk, right? I probably shoulda included it…
@Boardwatch Fans To be honest, I didn’t read it enough to write it up–and I wasn’t even sure if it was still with us–but I do remember how many huge fans it had.
@David Hunter Computer Shopper is still with us, no? 1/10th its old size, but extant.
@RU Serius You’re right! About Mondo 2000 at least…
Looks like I may do a sequel story based on all these nominations…keep it up!
–Harry
November 20th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
@Karen Wickre I also considered including Publish, and maybe I should have…it was not only a good magazine, but clearly helped the world to leverage the power of the topic it covered…
November 20th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
You’re not going to believe this Business 2.0 cover.
So painfully, utterly wrong.
Reader service stuff is typically fairly harmless.
But if anyone took this advice it probably put them in bankruptcy.
Sooooooo stupid.
http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/b20finalb.jpg
November 20th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
I think I have mugs from all these magazines in my basement.
November 20th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
what about Dr. Dobbs Journal ? Was I the only one who read that instead of Byte?
April 21st, 2011 at 9:53 am
Dr Dobb's Journal of Computing Orthodona, subtitled Running Light without Overbyte
I could have it a bit wrong. … Somwhere I still have the first couple of issues!
November 20th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Well I have to put a plug in for my beloved Computer Currents which I was editor of for many years. And of course to Steve’s point — I well remember Popular Computing. Great pub. Yes, I recall John Markoff worked in the same office as Jon Sacks in Palo Alto for a time in the ’80s when Markoff was at Byte.
Hard to see any upside ahead for print tech mags.
Big thanks for the article Harry, great read.
November 20th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
While COMPUTE! was originally aimed at PET owners, when it decided to embrace the other 6502 chippies, they did bring out a spinoff magazine called COMPUTE!’s Gazette, which strictly focused on the Commodore 64, 128, etc. COMPUTE! did eventually convert basic listings into hex/checksum entries so machine-code based programs could be entered, and the program I think they introduced that stratagem for was the original SpeedScript, a free and quite functional word processor that ran on a 64. I believe the late Jim Butterfield, as staunch a 6502 expert as they came, was on staff at COMPUTE!.
I remember, too, how deliciously thick these magazines were with info and ads. And type-in programs. Man, those were the days.
November 20th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
You are forgiven for leaving the most wonderful MicroCornucopia off your list — I’ll assume you never saw it.
Here’s a Flickr set for nostalgia’s sake: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mtm/sets/1463354/
November 20th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
I know you only left off poor Yahoo Internet Life ’cause you didn’t want to try your luck with Unlucky 13. I *know* that. (And @Joel, thanks for your kind words; we really did try hard to make it enjoyable for tech and non-tech folk alike!)
I don’t think anyone remembers Ziff’s *other* early Net-era launch, which had various names but ended up as, IIRC, ZD internet Magazine. I had a column in there and really thought the publication had potential; alas, its last issue appeared in December 1998. Still wish it had make it to the bubble part of the boom, if only because I think we could have provided some nice counterpoint to most Koolaid-tinted thinking at certain other mags…
November 20th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
And NewMedia magazine. Remember CD-ROMs? Good times.
November 20th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
I find it hard to believe that nobody mentioned “Kilobaud”, which later became “Kilobaud/Microcomputing”, and later just “Microcomputing”. If my memory serves me, Wayne Green started Kilobaud after he “lost” Byte Magazine (And he wasn’t too happy about that.)
April 21st, 2011 at 9:55 am
Yes, Wayne Green had '73 magazone (ham operators), then with his wife started Byte. They brought on Carl Helmers to run Byte, and Wayne lost it in an ugly divorce to his wife.
November 20th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
C’mon, half the magazines mentioned here weren’t even technical. I agree with Byte and Creative Computing, but what about Computer Language and PC Tech Journal?
November 20th, 2008 at 5:07 pm
Those of us in PR used to go home every Thursday night hoping we had done the right things to influence PC Week, and wondering what would appear…4 days later (and we used to call PC Week a “short lead!!”)
How about PC World? Personal Computing? I remember visiting them on The Alameda in San Jose.
Moving in to the progressively more arcane, how about Mini/Micro Systems? Computer Systems News? Man, no wonder we were busy.
November 20th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
Fantastic trip down the memory bus đ but you forgot SOFTSIDE magazine…
November 20th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
I agree that Computer Languages was one of the best magazines, with an imaginative editorial group that made it a fun read, however improbably that may sound. They once did a feature on minor languages with the info you’d need for cocktail-party-conversation-level knowledge.
V. cool.
mac
November 20th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
Oh, and Pop Computing was indeed great fun to read. Michael Miller was over there before he came to InfoWorld to be my boss.
Personal Computer was fun sometimes. Lee The (remember him?!) wrote a devastating critique of LANs (remember when ever year was going to be The Year of the LAN?), consisting simply of a narrative of his nightmare, attempting to set up an actual PC network in the offices of Personal Computing! I think that horror story/reality check saved lots of people lots of money and pain that year.
The rest of us were writing about the wonders of LANs while working on publishing-industry minicomputer systems — remember ATEX? — and had no idea how awful those early PC networks could be. When we started IDG Books in 1990, I chose Macintoshes because they actually *were* stupidly simple to network, on a basic level, anyway, which was all we needed.
November 20th, 2008 at 6:42 pm
Ah, memories are made of this. When I finished the article, I realized I’d totally forgotten about my beloved pub (shared with David Needle–I ran it the last six years of its life): Computer Currents. Some of the magazine still kinda lives online (via, ack, ComputerUser’s site) and the Internet Archive. A fun pub to run and we occasionally even scooped the likes of PC World. But my other big nominee: Publish! (or Publish) fer sure. A great, tightly focused mag, great writers and editors (Jim Felici, notably above them). It was strict about typography, fun with design, a smart, very useful read. Finally, another fave: ISO World. A lonnng ago IDG pub that got me started in the biz.
November 20th, 2008 at 9:36 pm
@David Needle @Robert Luhn Computer Currents was a class act. Before I worked at IDG, I worked at a startup where Currents was delivered and read a lot in the lunch room. Especially, of course, Gigglebytes…
@Angus Wong I loved Softside, but had forgotten about it!
–Harry
November 21st, 2008 at 4:27 am
In the MacUser entry, âsuccessful new Apple blog thatâs a good readâ is linked to macworld.co.uk. It should be linked to macuser.com.
November 21st, 2008 at 5:22 am
“Nibble”
I would be hard put to count the hours spent at my //e typing in code for the apps Nibble published. I had a great time reading Nibble… when I was younger.
November 21st, 2008 at 8:14 am
Seconding Marianne on the PR perspective, I remember badgering PC Week ed assts to fax me a copy of a client’s story on Monday mornings, so we didn’t have to wait for it in the afternoon mail. And, for a while, PC Week Labs reviews did rival InfoWorld Labs in popularity among my clients.
PR types also had our own snarky mag in Marketing Computers.
Lastly, Upside was a good complement to Red Herring, and David Bunnell himself did some great reporting.
November 21st, 2008 at 8:20 am
no love for MacWEEK? it was my favourite computer magazine back when. i mean, i realize it was a trade journal and not a mass-market tech publication, but the constant hemmhorraging of “behind-the-scenes” tidbits from inside Apple made it heady reading for me as a high school student.
plus, the reputation i gained among my peers for being “in the know” when it came to what was coming next from our favourite computer company was fun.
November 21st, 2008 at 8:29 am
I think Computer Shopper classic–the 1,000 page+ monster version–deserves mention. Besides paying my bills for several years, it kept gear heads happy for weeks on end comparing motherboard ads and the like. And, when no longer current, you could always pile them up by a wall for great winter insulation.
Steven
November 21st, 2008 at 9:30 am
And what about joop? dont you miss it?
November 21st, 2008 at 6:12 pm
@Harry McCracken correct me if my memory pointers are out of bounds on this but didn’t SoftSide also give the option of typed code on (gasp!) cassette tape? And later on that newfangled “diskette” thingamagig? Or was that another magazine? (I guess a few offered this huh?). To think any one of our emails today probably exceed all the code in one magazine issue those days…
November 24th, 2008 at 6:20 am
CUJ, the C Gazette (I believe that’s the right name? Went from an excellent C programmer’s magazine to a very poor Windows/VB journal in the ’90’s), and Computer Shopper (not dead yet, but might as well be when you compare a current copy with one from the late ’80’s).
November 25th, 2008 at 4:22 am
PC Tech Journal! During its too-brief life, it was the only serious platform-specific resource for PC developers.
December 3rd, 2008 at 8:28 am
How could you leave out the seminal 2600?
Also personal favourites: The Mac (published out of the UK), Omni and Mondo 2000
December 3rd, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Drbunsen: 2600 is still with us, no? If it were dead, it would be a great candidate for sure…
–Harry
December 3rd, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Angus: I think you could buy Softside on tape and maybe even disk. I also remember CLOAD, a magazine that came -only- on tape–no dead trees involved…
–Harry
December 3rd, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Gotta agree about MacWEEK being a seminal publication. Apple was always the computer company that engendered the most buzz via rumors and leaks, and MacWEEK (often known as “MacLeak”) presaged the web as the best way to get them. Many of us inside Apple anxiously awaited each issue to both find out what might be going on in other parts of the company as well as laugh at inaccuracies in things we knew about. The back page Mac the Knife rumors column was archetypical–Dan Lyons as Fake Steve Jobs has to give it at least a nod. And the Mac the Knife parties at Macworld Expo were always the hottest ticket to get in to.
Also it would have been nice to see a mention of Radio-Electronics alongside Popular Electronics, since they merged to become Poptronics.
December 5th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
Computer Language Magazine was awesome. The articles were exciting, the covers were art, and they had fun April Fool’s issues. Then it transitioned into being Software Development Magazine, and it was only good.
December 13th, 2008 at 7:32 pm
“Compute! was sold to Bob Guccioneâs General Media, thereby becoming a sister publication of Penthouse. If there have been two more utterly different magazines in publishing history, Iâm fogetting about them right now.”
Actually, if you think about it, Penthouse and Compute! are very similar magazines. Those type-in program listings are about as close as you can get to soft porn for the teenaged computer nerd.
They served the same purpose, but for different audiences.
December 15th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
What? no NEXT GENERATION???
December 17th, 2008 at 10:37 am
Harry:
Nice read! As someone who got their start at Creative Computinmg in the early 1980s and went on to write for A.N.A.L.O.G., ST-Log, Compute!, and lastly PC-Laptop, I remember those early days as especially exciting. I read every Creative, BYTE and Pop Electronics issue cover to cover for many years. Thanks for the flash-back.
December 18th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
You should do a list of the WORST defunct tech magazines of all time. You could start with Time Inc.’s trio of big budget flops: On, Time Digital, Business 2.0, and go from there.
December 22nd, 2008 at 3:03 pm
I’ll chime in with jhota and Lun Esex with kudos for MacWeek. Getting on their comp list was the holy grail in my office. It was a weekly blast of MacWorld Expo and, like my back issues of MacWorld, MacUser and Byte, it’s just too hard to simply pitch them into the recycle bin…
January 2nd, 2009 at 11:05 am
What about RAINBOW, the magazine for the Tandy Color Computer?
Computer Shopper is indeed still around, but I don’t think for long. It really died when Stan Veit sold it to (you guessed it) Ziff-Davis, which purged it of any non-IBM PC content. What pundits it had left have vanished, and in the days of the Web, no dead-tree publication can keep up on ads.
January 16th, 2009 at 7:22 am
I loved Creative Computing. There were ads by a software company called Beagle Brothers that had 3-line Basic programs that did amazing tricks on the Apple II.
February 21st, 2009 at 5:46 pm
Some of your picks were right on (Creative Computing, Compute!, Byte, MacUser). Many were way off the mark (80/Microcomputing – YUCK!, Computer Gaming World – always a boring magazine)
You don’t have A.N.A.L.O.G. Computing? The magazine still has websites devoted to it, continues to be the subject of a fair amount of internet traffic, and after many years a huge cult following.
But thanks for remembering some of the greats.
-LHP
February 27th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
What about Electronic Entertainment? And, to be fair, its competitors CD-ROM Today and Multimedia World?
Just ‘cuz CD-ROMs didn’t change the world the way we thought they would (thank you very much, Mr. Internet), it was a glorious moment when the technology and entertainment worlds first got together.
May 6th, 2010 at 7:00 pm
@Brian Knoblauch: The magazine you’re referring to was the C User’s Journal, published in Kansas by what was originally the C Users’ Group.
The C Gazette was a different magazine, of which I was the editor. It ran from 1986 to 1992 and was solely focused on C and C++ and was code-intensive.
February 1st, 2011 at 5:59 am
I remember reading the Byte editorial when Windows 3.0 was launched. They had thoroughly tested the new product, and were convinced that it would completely revolutionise the PC environment.
April 21st, 2011 at 10:00 am
For tech only, ROBOT magazine had construction information and was great for control systems, as it was still new to most of the computing world and single board computers were just starting.