1, It's a massive book like magazine if you ever hold one in your hand. Usually more than 300 pages sometimes up to 500, it's not like today's print media at all. I'm not even sure huge magazines like this exist anymore.
2, The amount of ads are insane. Like 1:3 ratio of article:ads if not more. Most of the times the lead articles are interrupted by 3 pages of ads after every page. It's interesting to look back at those ads from today but it's also a jarring experience to some extent.
Also make sure to read the letters to editor part! Always fun
There was also almost nothing to read, so when my monthly issue of Byte appeared (2-3 months later than most people would receive it), I devoured that thing. I would read it literally cover to cover, including all those ads, several times.
I wasn't (then) working in IT, so a lot of the content (like Steve Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar) went way over my head but it didn't matter, I read it anyway, often by the light of my kerosene lantern. I learned a huge amount: object-oriented programming, this new thing called the Internet (capitalized back then, and before the WWW), and how Jerry Pournelle was a self-important jerk (but boy, did I envy the toys he got to play with!).
This was the age of big, fold-out Gateway 2000 ads, 20MB hard drives, and Turbo Pascal kicking other compilers' butts.
I would read the magazine, then write out programs (in BASIC, the only language I had learned at that point). On my monthly trips to the capital city I would go to a local NGO and in exchange for helping with their IT issues they would let me play (i.e type out my programs and try to get them working) on their computers.
Access to BBS was super expensive unless you were lucky to afford a modem, and live on local call distance.
European magazine like Computer Shopper were of similar size and ads ratio.
I remember reading ads about a specific make of vacuum pumps next to an article with experiments which used them.
Today's ads are so obtrusive because you get toilet seat ads next to an article about general relativity.
More seriously though, print advertising was able to target readers based upon the demographics of the publications readership. They didn't track people across their online life and beyond. (That said, there definitely was some tracking.)
All lost during a move from one city to another - except for one Byte book: Threaded Interpreted Languages.
https://archive.org/details/R.G.LoeligerThreadedInterpretive...
I learned a tremendous deal from it and I will forever be grateful.
I also have lots of the actual machines and parts, especially Apple, Commodore. Ship them too?