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 Harry McCracken | Wednesday, February 3, 2010
“Reagan White House Learns to Compute”
In the era of the BlackBerry-toting president, the notion that anybody in the White House using computers was once big news is startling. But my friend and PC World colleague Peggy Watt’s piece says that the Reagan Administration was the first to bring PCs to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The lineup included IBM PCs and TRS-80 Model 100 laptops, and I suspect that the Gipper himself stuck to pen and paper.
InfoWorld previews something it calls the IBM PC2–it’s really the best-selling machine that would be known as the PC XT. Another piece reports on the arrival of touch-screen computers, and says there was controversy over whether touch is an adequate substitute for traditional means of input. Sound familiar?
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I Love the Eighties! Says:
February 3rd, 2010 at 2:57 am[…] View The Golden Age of InfoWorld Covers slide show. […]
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And That’s What You Missed on Technologizer Says:
December 31st, 2010 at 12:34 pm[…] I took a look back at tech of the early 1980s, in the form of old InfoWorld covers. […]
February 3rd, 2010 at 8:42 am
Cool. As I recall, Apple was actually more profitable after Steve Jobs left. It didn’t last long though. 🙂
February 3rd, 2010 at 5:43 pm
Love the sidebar on #9 – it says “Businesses can buy software electronically.” And that was news then!
February 4th, 2010 at 8:50 am
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?
June 29th, 2011 at 12:09 pm
I remember your writing Michael!
February 5th, 2010 at 3:35 pm
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.