#popular computing

I mentioned here some time ago how I understood Popular Computing had published one more issue than the apparently penultimate one I'd been able to find on the Internet Archive at the time. Not that long ago, I did find that last issue (and some of the first numbers). This rather business-focused magazine put one of its reviews on its front cover, featuring a "headless PC" the Macintosh would interface with through one of its serial ports. The review did make the point that for the $1800 the MacCharlie cost, you could buy a pretty decent PC clone (which would offer graphics as well as text) to go alongside your Mac. In any case, while there was still a next-issue preview promising a head-to-head comparison of the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST ("knocking on the Macintosh's door") and "part two" of a series on getting more from MS-DOS, this seems pretty much the end of the line for Popular Computing.

USA 1981

This is the last issue of Popular Computing available on the Internet Archive. There was a small “next issue preview” in it. However, a later source suggests the magazine didn’t make it out of 1985...

Along with the assorted applications and portable computers promoted on this issue’s cover, Steven Levy’s column pondered the differences between computing in Britain (which still seemed filled with enthusiastic hobbyists making do with homebrewed hardware that seemed obsolete by American standards, but much more affordable by British standards) and France (which seemed to be embracing business computing for the bureaucracy with an eye towards Apple) and Jerry Pournelle’s column talked up “computer mediated communications” (with a resemblance what would soon have the more prosaic name “message boards.”)

The IBM PC AT was beginning to be followed by other 80286-powered MS-DOS computers (although MS-DOS couldn’t quite command all the capabilities of that chip), and some of them appeared in this issue. It also covered the appearance of the Commodore Amiga, and Steven Levy’s column took a somewhat skeptical look at Jack Tramiel’s Atari as it prepared to release the Atari ST.

This issue’s cover feature looked at “mini-programs” that could be started while a larger application was running, an unusual feature for 1985′s computers. While its focus was on MS-DOS, a sidebar did talk about the desk accessories of the Macintosh. It might also be noted that this issue added a subtitle trying to focus on the professional business market.

The fusion of a telephone and a computer (in some more complicated and mystical fashion than attaching a modem) featured in this issue. It also had an article about how “telecommuting” hadn’t taken off quite as fast as people had been supposing just a few years before.