Computer magazine

Computer magazines are about computers and related subjects, such as networking and the Internet. Most computer magazines offer (or offered) advice, some offer programming tutorials, reviews of the latest technologies, and advertisements.

Datamation published in 1957 was the first Computer and Data Processing magazine. It is still being published as an ePublication on the Internet. Futurist Donald Prell was its founder. Dr Dobbs Journal is one of the oldest computer magazines still being published, and it was the first to focus on software, rather than hardware.

1980s computer magazines skewed their content towards the hobbyist end of the then-microcomputer market, and used to contain type-in programs, but these have gone out of fashion. The first magazine devoted to this class of computers was Creative Computing. Byte was an influential technical journal that published until the 1990s.

By late 1983 more than 200 computer magazines existed. Their numbers and size grew rapidly with the industry they covered, and BYTE and 80 Micro were among the three thickest magazines of any kind per issue. Computers were the only industry with product-specific magazines, like 80 Micro, PC Magazine, and Macworld; their editors vowed to impartially cover their computers whether or not doing so hurt their readers' and advertisers' market, while claiming that their rivals pandered to advertisers by only publishing positive news. Many magazines, however, did not survive the video game crash of 1983, which badly hurt the home-computer market. Dan Gutman, the founder of Computer Games, recalled in 1987 that "the computer games industry crashed and burned like a bad night of Flight Simulator—with my magazine on the runway".Antic's advertising sales declined by 50% in 90 days.Computer Gaming World stated in 1988 that it was the only one of the 18 color magazines that covered computer games in 1983 to survive the crash.Compute! similarly stated that year that it was the only general-interest survivor of about 150 consumer-computing magazines published in 1983.

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