I eventually subscribed anyway, but it was absolutely a staple of bookstore shelves up until it became a pale shadow if its former self (much like PC Mag and others).

Same happened to me! Renewed for 2 years after being a subscriber for many years, and then they just stopped publishing a few issues later. And they offered 'Windows Magazine' as a substitute - ugh, no thanks...

Not at this stage. In 1979 is was a hobby zine for computer builders. By the mid-90's it was trying to compete against IT rags that were definitely for "mass" consumption. But early Byte was absolutely targeted at electronics experts, with a strong assumption of solid software skills.

Yes, I agree that BYTE eventually expanded (or diluted if one chose that viewpoint) their coverage into areas that overlapped with PC Magazine etc. But they still had more of a niche audience. Here's an example issue from 1994.[1] If one flips through the pages, it has stories about CISC/RISC and Object-Oriented COBOL. It also has ads for a disk hex editor and Watcom C++ compiler. The typical computer enthusiast that's playing around with WordPerfect/Lotus and games like Microsoft Flight Simulator didn't care about geekier topics like that.

My first IT director was a programmer and even he didn't subscribe to BYTE. He did subscribe to PC Magazine and ComputerWorld.

[1] https://archive.org/details/ByteV19N9

We remember differently. Yes, the libraries had BYTE but again, I'm talking about relative popularity. As another datapoint, the 1980s grocery stores' magazine section which of course would be much smaller than Barnes & Noble would have PC Magazine and Computer Shopper but they never carried BYTE. BYTE was always more niche than PC Magazine which lowered the number of retail outlets where it could be purchased.

PC Magazine covered applications (Lotus 123, MS DOS, etc) and games which was relevant to a larger population. BYTE was never a magazine for the "masses".

English isn't my main language and haven't seen this term before. Thanks!