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From: lphillips@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca (Larry Phillips)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st,comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Toothless Byte (Re: TT desktop & prices)
Message-ID: <1990@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca>
Date: 16 Sep 90 21:53:08 GMT
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To: van-bc!rnews

In <82@maxx.UUCP>, tyager@maxx.UUCP (Tom Yager) writes:
>
>As for displacing a PC clone review, balderdash! Open any recent issue 
>of BYTE, and you'll see reviews of software development tools, UNIX 
>workstations, Mac stuff, graphics hardware...PCs get a lot of ink because
>they are rolled out more quickly than any other type of computer, but we go
>out of our way to make sure that other platforms get covered. If anything, we
>kill PC clone reviews in favor of something more interesting.

If you do, or if you start doing it more, it will definitely be a welcome
change.  I have not even bothered to glance at a Byte in a large number of
months, since I really was not interested in reviews that raved about yet
another fractional increase in clock speed hailed as a significant improvement.

>We recognized some months ago that people were starting to see us as strictly a
>PC book. So, we're changing. Lots of changes are already in place, but 1991
>will bring an almost entirely new BYTE. I won't give away any secrets, but
>we're working to bring back a lot of the nuts-and-bolts, technical leadership
>that made BYTE so popular way back when. It's already happening. Check out the
>September (if you can lift it) and October issues for a few tastes of things to
>come.

I hope so. I have nearly every issue, right up to about 1987, and from then on,
they get more and more sparse. It will continue on if I see a swing away from
slavish devotion to Intel, IBM, and the clone makers, but that hole in the
collection will remain. I won't have the sort of garbage that's been in the
magazine recently cluttering my home.  I'll look for the issues you mention,
with a feeling of hope that you are saying sooth.

>I assume you call our multi-platform coverage "tenuous" because it hasn't
>included much Amiga. Well, that's about to change. No details there, either.
>Wait and see.

I don't. I call it tenuous because for a VERY long time, nothing seemed to get
reviewed unless it was an IBM compatible, or unless it was capable of emulating
it. I watched with horror as article after article completely ignored large
segments of the industry, ignored superior hardware, ignored superior software,
while fawning over MsDos, OS/2, Intel, and so on.

Somebody once said that if Cray were to come out with a shirt-pocket, 100 MIPS
machine with 20 megs of memory and 1 gig of disk, and sold it for $300, the
first thing the industry would ask is "Is it IBM compatible?".  This is the
feeling I got whenever I looked at a Byte in the past few years.

>Before you complain about how BYTE has lost its teeth, go out and buy the
>September or October issue. Read it, thoroughly, and if you still don't like
>what you see, write and tell us why. Every letter we get is read and 
>discussed, and readers' opinions DO have an impact on how the magazine works.

I sincerely hope you are right in what you say about new directions.  Byte has
too much influence to be in a position of promoting nothing but the lowest
common denominator to those who know no better.

-larry

--
It is not possible to both understand and appreciate Intel CPUs.
    -D.Wolfskill
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|   //   Larry Phillips                                                 |
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