There came a point for me in the 90's, I think, where BYTE kind of jumped the shark - it became THICK, but not informative - where there was just so much advertising. In those days, even the ads could be informative, but it seemed that as BYTE struggled to be relevant, it became thicker and thicker - pretty much guaranteeing its own demise.

I still value a massive collection when I see it, in atomic form, in the real universe of course - but my personal reading of the .PDF archive is usually focused more on its early years - which just seems so much more pioneering/adventurous.