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I Love the 80s: InfoWorld's Golden Age

Thanks to Google Books, InfoWorld's entire print run is now available to peruse. Take a trip down memory lane with these standout issues from 1984 – 1985.

By Harry McCracken, Technologizer

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Tech Time Capsules

Back in the 1980s, if you wanted to stay particularly up-to-date on the PC business, you read a newsweekly–and there was a high chance that the newsweekly you read was IDG’s InfoWorld. Among the most venerable and successful computing publications–it started in 1978 and thrives online today–InfoWorld was famous back then for its frequent format changes. In 1984 and 1985, it adopted a BusinessWeek-like look and feel. The issues from this era may not have been the best issues of InfoWorld ever, but they’re the most fun ones to revisit. (Thanks to Google Books, revisiting InfoWorld’s entire print run is now easy.)

These mid-80s covers are miniature time capsules. Here are a bunch that capture the period in all its innovative, innocent, silly glory. Click on the cover-dates in the following slides to read the issues.

(Full disclosure: I’m an InfoWorld alum, having worked there from 1992-1994. It seems like half the people I know in tech journalism are ex-InfoWorlders, such as Calendar Swamp proprietor Scott Mace, author of several of the stories here.)

Apple Bets on Macintosh

February 13th, 1984

Steve Jobs gives off a goofy I’m a Pepper vibe in this photo, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the A-OK! pose was the photographer’s idea, and that Steve is none too pleased with it. The cover spotlights a package of stories inside; InfoWorld was impressed by the Mac but said it was a risky move on Apple’s part. Twenty-six years later, the bet seems to have paid off.

In the other story mentioned on the cover, InfoWorld wonders–years before the Newton, PalmPilot, and iPhone–if pocket computers were a fad whose time had past.

Is Atari Going Down the Tubes?

February 27th, 1984

Yup, definitely–Atari was indeed going down the tubes. Fast. In July, parent company Warner Communications unloaded it to ousted Commodore founder Jack Tramiel for $50 in cash and $250 million in promissory notes and stock. (More on that soon.) When Tramiel took over, new Chairman Morgan and new CEO Farrand took off.

The Company That Made Software Easy to Use

April 30th, 1984

Anyone who remembers software in the 1980s at all remembers giants such as Ashton-Tate, Borland, Lotus, WordPerfect, and an outfit called Microsoft, but Software Publishing Corp. (SPC) was a major name that’s been largely forgotten. (It doesn’t even have a Wikipedia entry of its own.) Back in the day, its PFS: line of productivity apps were well-regarded bestsellers–as evidenced by the praise InfoWorld lavished on SPC in this cover story.

The magazine is also impressed by TeleVideo’s new transportable computer–”transportable” meaning that it weighed a mere 32 pounds.

Exclusive: A ‘Real’ Computer on Your Lap?

May 7th, 1984

Exciting, isn’t it? The first laptops, such as Radio Shack’s Model 100, had small screen and didn’t run DOS. InfoWorld reports on a radical idea: PC-compatible notebooks with roomier screens, lots of features, and a cool half-megabyte of memory. The Apple mentioned on the cover was not a laptop but the then-unannounced IIC; you could get an optional LCD display for it, but it remained a desktop with an LCD screen, not a notebook.

The issue also includes a review of IBM’s legendarily lousy PCJr. I’d love to be able to report that InfoWorld thought it would be a hit, but reviewer Amanda Hixson rightly identifies it as a stinker from the start.

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.

Radio Shack Tackles Its 'Schlock' Image

August 20th, 1984

Radio Shack once had a schlocky image? Seriously? I kid because I love, but let it be noted that a quarter century has passed and the company still believes its customers don’t understand it. Jim Bartimo’s story is largely pro-Shack–it notes that Tandy was a larger company than Apple, and claims that nobody refers to its computers as Trash-80s anymore–and concludes that it “will always be in the computer industry.” (It stopped manufacturing machines about a decade after this story appeared.)

Also in the issue: a story on a $12,000 graphics card/animation package and an update on Apple’s proto-Mac, the Lisa.

Reagan White House Learns to Compute

August 27th, 1984

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?

Software Packages Get Inside Your Head

September 24th, 1984

No, that image overlaying the president (doing his “I can’t hear you” bit) isn’t a Blue Screen of Death. This election-year cover story by Denise Caruso tests an application for creating psychological profiles–part of an alleged big trend–by feeding it information on President Ronald Reagan and challenger Walter Mondale. (Fun fact: the software was distributed by Frisbee manufacturer Wham-O.) A sidebar examined software that could supposedly hypnotize PC users.

Christmas Wars: Can Anyone Win?

December 17th, 1984

The lead story, “Will Home Computing Survive?,” reports on the death throes of the 8-bit home computer business, as Commodore and Atari tried to price-cut each other out of the game. (Fittingly, the cover model was the general manager of Crazy Eddie’s, where prices were insaaaaaane.) There’s also a sidebar on Commodore’s plans for a next-generation computer based on a design from a company it had acquired: Amiga Corporation.

A story on “lap-size computers” is a reminder that the term “laptop” wasn’t pervasive yet; one on blazing 2400-baud modems says that home users won’t need that much speed.

Laptops Prove a Useful Tool

March 4th, 1985

Here’s how long ago 1985 was: InfoWorld had to publish a feature explaining the idea that laptops were useful. And author Scott Mace didn’t seem completely convinced, explaining that most computer users didn’t see the point of carrying machines with them: “No one knows exactly what is needed in a portable computer because only a vanguard of users has yet taken the plunge.”

Also newsworthy that week: The French loved Macs–and Steve Jobs–but Apple was having trouble selling computers in the UK.

Electronic Mail Beefs Up Business

March 18th, 1985

Electronic mail–apparently not yet shortened to “e-mail”–was catching on more slowly than folks had anticipated, InfoWorld reportes. (Only half of its readers were online at all.) But some cutting-edge workers were finding electronic mail useful, such as the Peat Marwick exec on the cover, who was so addicted he checked his inbox up to three times a day.

GEM, Digital Research’s Mac-like graphical front end for PCs, is said to be doing well in another story. Long-term, it would be crushed by Windows, which had been announced at this point but hadn’t shipped.

Microsoft’s Excel Takes on 1-2-3

May 27th, 1985

29-year-old Bill Gates brandishes a floppy copy of his upstart spreadsheet, Excel–which at this point only ran on Macs. It wouldn’t reach PCs for another two and a half years, and it took around another six years after that until it became the world’s dominant spreadsheet.

In a sidebar, InfoWorld asks Gates if the much-delayed Windows will ship in June. He says “Yes.” It does ship. In November.

Another story reports on a bizarre incident I’d never heard of: troubled computer companies Victor and Osborne being ticked off after Radio Shack and Bloom County cartoonist Berke Breathed labeled their machines as “orphans.” The article also says that IBM ran ads claiming that the PCJr. hadn’t failed–Big Blue had just manufactured all the Jrs. that it needed. Oh, okay.

Can Apple Hold Together?

June 24th, 1985

For something like a decade and a half, woe-is-Apple stories were staples of the technology and business press. (Here’s a famous example.) InfoWorld’s story notes that CEO John Sculley had forced co-founder and Chairman Steve Jobs out of day-to-day decision making, and quotes EA founder Trip Hawkins saying Jobs wasn’t qualified to make important engineering decisions. Jobs, meanwhile, says that his fight to run Apple is just beginning.

Will the Amiga Challenge Apple?

August 5th, 1985

The cover features a short piece on Commodore’s Amiga. Scott Mace says it’s an innovative, well-designed machine that might give the Mac and Atari ST a run for their money, but that it’s having trouble getting into the major retail chains.

Another story relays the happy news that modems capable of synchronous communications at a zippy 2400 baud have fallen to an affordable $800.

Software Swamps Mac Development

August 12th, 1985

That headline doesn’t make much sense to me, but it’s for another bleak story about Apple. The piece says that the Mac is too closed and hasn’t evolved fast enough, and that it needs more applications. It quotes an analyst as saying that Commodore’s Amiga might overtake the Mac, and the most optimistic thing that the guy in charge of Mac software at Microsoft says is that Apple is “not dead yet.”

In a separate story, Steve Jobs–no longer in charge of the Mac, but still at Apple–tells InfoWorld that Apple’s sales woes are due to the sluggish economy. A month later, he would resign and announce he was starting a new company, NeXT.

More tech nostalgia at Technologizer:

The 25 Most Notable Quotes in Tech History

Classic PCs vs. New PCs: Their True Cost

Brilliant but Doomed: Technology’s Most Magnificent Failures

The Thirteen Greatest Error Messages of All Time