“And so it came to pass that on November 19th, 2008 publisher Ziff Davis announced that PC Magazine–in the print version that gave it its name–was going to the great newsstand in the sky. When it gets there, it’ll have plenty of company: Most of the most important tech magazines ever published are no more, victims of the periodic industry shakeouts that are almost as old as the industry itself,” Harry McCracken writes for Technologizer.
McCracken writes, “Herewith, a look at a dozen tech publications that don’t exist anymore (in print form, at least–some are still with us online). All of them were significant in one way or another, all had loyal readerships who mourned their loss, and most were terrific magazines, period. It’s in chronological order by the year of founding. And no, I didn’t include PC Mag: It’s got one more issue to go and therefore isn’t a defunct tech magazine just yet.”
McCracken’s Twelve Greatest Defunct Tech Magazines Ever:
• Popular Electronics (1954-1985)
• Creative Computing (1974-1985)
• Byte (1975-1998)
• InfoWorld (1978-2007)
• Compute! (1979-1994)
• 80/Microcomputing (1980-1988)
• Computer Gaming World (1981-2008)
• .info (1983-1992)
• MacUser (1985-1997)
• PC/Computing (1988-2002)
• Upside (1989-2002)
• The Industry Standard (1998-2001)
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We’d add MacAddict (1996-2007*) to the list — especially the early years, before they lost their edge (not counting the AutoStart 9805 Worm incident).
*MacAddict was rebranded Mac|Life in February 2007.
MacUser – wasn’t it swallowed up by MacWorld??? I used to have stacks of them laying about. Now all recycled after I tired of moving them all over creation.
Creative Computing.
Best. Computer Mag. Ever.
The list doesn’t even cover the Trade Pubs that you couldn’t even buy a subscription for and the one that printed a subscription price were hundreds or thousands a year. The IT world use to be full of these free if you qualified for trade pubs that were great tech publications
Macaddict was the best magazine in the world during its first few years.
MacAddict – RIP
Kilobaud
Interface Age
loved Byte magazine. It was hot especially when there were so many CPUs out there REMEMBER? Alpha (from DEC), MIPS, Pentium, Cyrix, PowerPC, AMD. Those were cool issues. I still didnt understand everything i read, but it was always interesting. That says alot about the insight and writing that was found in Byte.
The trees will appreciate this… I think credit card companies should stop snail mailing us all this junk mail. We can find them on the Web.
MacWeek
*MacAddict was rebranded Mac|Life in February 2007.
Couldn’t bring myself to renew the subscription after the rebranding/lame-ification of MacAddict.
man the first few years of MacAddict were awesome. who thought that a decade later i’d actually look like Prison Guy.
MacUser is still going – every 2 weeks here in the UK!
Antic and Analog – two great Atari mags!
Ahh yes BYTE was amzazing. There was something for everyone in that mag. and you were smarter for having read it, even if much of it was incomprehensible
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i miss “mac today” … the early newsprint edition (way before it became “layers”)
I miss the ‘VideoGames & Computer Entertainment’ of the late 80’s. I learned about the Genesis, PC Engine and the Gameboy because of them. I remember reading about the Gameboy while waiting for my parents at the YMCA.
MacWeek, yes!
MacAddict was cute fluff, but hardly great. The demo disks were nice.
Popular Electronics is gone?!?
@stucktrader
Yes Byte was definitely one of the best. They did get it wrong occasionally (like one article claiming that a 12 MHz 80286 was faster at double precision floating point than a 16 MHz 68020 with a 68881 coprocessor), but in general they were very good. How many of us were pare of BIX (Byte Information Exchange). A good ‘net capability long before AOL or the “Web”.
@kirkgray
To this day I regret throwing out my weekly Macweek issues. There were lots of interesting articles in there found no where else like Apple’s highest market share in the U.S. was 19.2% in either the second or third calendar quarter of 1990 (don’t recall which one) and the time the broke the story on Apple’s new Firewire (at 50 Mbps at the time — either ’89 or ’90) and Apple’s attempt at replacing NUBUS with QuickRing (an Apple invented bus but only used by DayStar Digital for one of their video cards — long before SLI) and the time they described Pink and what it was going to do (but that Scully and others didn’t really realize its true capabilities and innovation).
My votes:
• MacWeek
• Morph’s Outpost
Oh wait, I forgot:
• Incider
• Compute!
@ KenC: I was surprised too!
How am I going to get tips on where to find better tubes for my Heathkit™ TV?
iCreate
(used a high gloss, high def format much copied – see website iclarified for a similar style)
A high gloss format? Didn’t they offer a matte format?
PS: I will never buy a Snorg T-shirt – because of all their annoying spam ads.
I miss reading the mags for free in the book store. Now I have to figure out how to get free coffee.
I loved InfoWorld, and the Industry Standard. And let’s not forget, MacAddict rocked back during its hey day. I miss ’em.