• Why did this magazine stop publishing? Byte, an overtly technical magazine, kinda faded away back in the U.S. back in 1998 (but continued publishing in other countries), which is too bad, because it had a style all its own – less what-if pontification like Wired, more nitty-gritty detail. For much of its existence in the U.S., it also had Jerry Pournelle, a science fiction author who interspersed geek stuff into homespun, slice-of-life back-page articles. But now, it’s coming back as a professional-oriented consumer technology magazine. The reboot should be interesting, because even though the magazine started one of the first online services (Byte Information eXchange, better known as BIX), they missed out on the social media revolution completely. When they shut down, the Pentium II was top of the line and Apple’s first iMac had yet to be released. Everything has changed since then. Hopefully Byte can catch up to current technology trends quickly. (Thanks to Digibarn for the scan of Byte’s very first issue.) source

Posted by Ernie Smith • Permalink