The Golden Age of InfoWorld Covers, 1984-1985

Return with us now to the days when Radio Shack was a PC giant, Apple was on the ropes, and people thought laptops were a foolish fad.

Posted by  | Wednesday, February 3, 2010


“Tramiel Moves In: Can He Save Atari?”

August 6th, 1984

I always think of Commodore founder Jack Tramiel with a cigar in his hand, but in this cover photo he’s tobacco-free and full of steely determination. Tramiel had just taken over ailing Atari, and the story is devoted to figuring out his intentions. He ended up installing his sons in key management positions and releasing cheap Maclike PCs nicknamed “Jackintoshes.” The Tramiel era lasted for a dozen increasingly irrelevant years.

The intriguing cover line about an Epson computer working like a PC and a Mac turns out to refer to a piece on the company’s 8-bit QX-10 computer; InfoWorld said its Valpaint and Valdraw apps were reminiscent of Apple programs.



Slides: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

5 Comments For This Post

  1. Stilgar Says:

    Cool. As I recall, Apple was actually more profitable after Steve Jobs left. It didn’t last long though. 🙂

  2. Matthew Says:

    Love the sidebar on #9 – it says “Businesses can buy software electronically.” And that was news then!

  3. Michael Swaine Says:

    But the Google Books collection only seems to go back to late 1986. What about the 1981-1986 issues? Are they adding gradually? Or should I help them out with my back-issue collection?

  4. Cassie Maas Says:

    I remember your writing Michael!

  5. Wade Watson Says:

    These were from the later period of Infoworld for me. When I first subscribed it was more of a tabloid style with a newspaper-style cover. Anybody could get a subscription for free if you said you were a business. Every issue was worth reading if for nothing else John Dvorak’s column. Before he was a podcast cramugin he was the go-to guy for tech scoops. Albeit, he pretty much had that field to himself back then.

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    […] I took a look back at tech of the early 1980s, in the form of old InfoWorld covers. […]