Softdisk (disk magazine)

It was the first publication of the company that was also known as Softdisk, which would go on to publish disk magazines for other systems, other software, and later be involved in Internet access, hosting, and development.

The first issue was published in September, 1981, and consisted of a single 5.25" floppy diskette which could be flipped over to get to content on the back side.

Originally, the subscribers had to send back the previous month's disk when the following issue was received; reusable mailers were used for this purpose, with a postage-paid return address label on the flip side of the address label used for outbound mailing, which was inserted in a plastic Ziploc baggie on the outside of the mailer so it could be reversed by the recipient.

As the publication grew and evolved, however, it became more conventional and "mainstream", losing some of its early quirky flavor and the community that developed around it; ultimately, it was more of a normal commercial publication, sold on an annual subscription basis and in retail stores, with a paid staff and contracted freelancers to produce material, and without any disk-return requirement.

The original publication continued past the time when most people in the computer field regarded the Apple II as obsolete, but eventually ended publication in August, 1995 with issue #166 (at which point then-editor Peter Rokitski was putting it out practically singlehandedly), survived by disk magazines for other computer lines such as the Macintosh and Windows which lasted a few more years before the entire line of Softdisk disk magazines was terminated.