[HN Gopher] History of Apple Portables
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History of Apple Portables
Author : tambourine_man
Score : 70 points
Date : 2021-10-17 03:53 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| My first portable was The Luggable (that 20-pound, lead/acid-
| battery monster), in the late 1980s. I also had a Duo, for a
| couple of years; complete with its dock.
|
| I've probably had just about every one of them, over my career. I
| think my favorite design was the "Blackbird" model. It would be
| ridiculous, these days, but back then, it was pretty awesome.
| ftio wrote:
| My first childhood computer was an IBM P70 luggable. I loved
| that thing. It had such great feel -- so many clicky parts --
| that really appealed to me as a little kid.
|
| The keyboard, which snapped into the case, also had these
| little legs on the back that swiveled so you could set it at an
| angle. The 3.5" floppy drive tilted out, and it had a great
| IBM-blue button to press to eject. Naturally the keyboard was
| clicky as all get-out. Beautiful orange plasma display. In
| hindsight, you'd think it would make MS Paint boring, but I
| loved it just the same.
|
| One story. At maybe 4 or 5 years old, I thought to myself: I
| wonder if I can make this blue floppy eject button pop out
| without putting a disk in the drive. So I jammed a plastic
| ruler around inside the drive feeling for some kind of latch to
| press. I was not able to get the button to come out, but I sure
| as hell broke the drive. Whatever software was on the machine
| before jamming that thing around is the software that stayed on
| that machine for the rest of its days.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I can relate _(esp. about the breaking something find out how
| it works part)_.
|
| We had an Osborne at my job, and later, a KayPro. Pretty
| similar luggables.
| lmilcin wrote:
| I am seeing these post recently and they get on my nerve. I have
| actually lived through a lot of that history and I remember it
| quite differently.
|
| One could think, after reading these kinds of posts, that Apple
| was the single force that created modern portable devices.
|
| This is selecting facts from history, taking away any context,
| creating impression that Apple did it all alone.
|
| For an alternative history, look for example here:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_laptops
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| > This is selecting facts from history, taking away any
| context, creating impression that Apple did it all alone.
|
| News at eleven! It's the same thing with practically everything
| else (and not only from Apple), but what can one do...
| simonh wrote:
| The article is by Steven Sinofsky who was at Microsoft at the
| time, who absolutely knows what he's taking about, and
| extensively documents the state of Windows portables right
| alongside the Mac. How is that "taking away context"?
| wffurr wrote:
| I didn't see that in this post at all. If anything, Apple was
| way behind at the start on portables, and it even mentions that
| the famous "yellow envelope" moment was pure marketing ad there
| were already Sony laptops that could do the same trick.
|
| You do have to somehow acknowledge and explain the dominance
| that Apple portables have in the popular imagination though,
| and that's what this does.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > that the famous "yellow envelope" moment was pure marketing
| ad there were already Sony laptops that could do the same
| trick.
|
| I can't remember any laptop doing the same trick at the time.
| Perhaps some Vaio models could?
|
| The trick with the envelope was the long-needed nail in the
| coffin of netbooks: it was a fully-functional laptop with
| none of the compromises that netbooks at the time had.
| wffurr wrote:
| "It didn't matter that there were many PCs smaller/ lighter
| (including from SONY!) and many that fit in a yellow
| envelope."
|
| https://mobile.twitter.com/stevesi/status/14494436533493760
| 1...
| [deleted]
| Joeri wrote:
| For example, the Sony Vaio TZ from 2007:
| http://www.notebookreview.com/notebookreview/sony-vaio-
| tz-re...
|
| The air was the thinnest laptop at the time of its reveal
| though.
| lmilcin wrote:
| By entire 0.8mm. Not exactly Earth shattering.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _the famous "yellow envelope" moment_
|
| Manilla. Not yellow.
|
| "The Manila component of the name originates from Manila
| hemp, locally known as abaca, the main material for Manila
| folders, alongside the Manila envelope and Manila paper."
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manila_folder
| kergonath wrote:
| > If anything, Apple was way behind at the start on
| portables, and it even mentions that the famous "yellow
| envelope" moment was pure marketing ad there were already
| Sony laptops that could do the same trick.
|
| That wasn't the start at all, Apple had been making laptops
| for 20 years at that time. Apple and Sony had been
| leapfrogging each other ever since the very first PowerBook
| (built by Sony). The titanium PowerBooks and iBooks (and to a
| lesser extent the Wall Street and Bronze G3s) were great
| devices in different ways, certainly not worse than their
| Vaio competitors.
|
| What Sony had and Apple had not was a broad range of tons of
| devices, each one with its own special gimmick. And a lot of
| terrible machines in the dark years between ~1991-1998.
| wffurr wrote:
| I didn't say that was the start? Did you read the thread or
| what I was responding to?
| smackeyacky wrote:
| It might be a symptom of people aging out if the industry or
| what jobs they may have had. Cloistered in a university
| somebody may never have seen the groundbreaking Toshibas, or
| the Zenith supersport. Its been interesting to me to watch an
| industry giant like Toshiba abandon the laptop market while
| Apple took all the mindshare. Zenith was probably doomed as
| their main businesses were decimated by white box suppliers but
| toshiba had few peers 25 or 30 years ago.
|
| I did used to favour toshibas but the last two were hard to
| distinguish from everything else.
| cehrlich wrote:
| Some 20+ years ago my dad had a Toshiba Portege (no idea what
| the model number was, but it had a P3-500) that didn't weigh
| more than a current MacBook Air, yet was a competent laptop.
| They were truly ahead of their time in some ways.
|
| I wonder what happened. Innovation slowed down? Poor product
| market fit / not price competitive? Failed at securing
| corporate mindshare like Dell/HP/IBM?
| smackeyacky wrote:
| I'm not sure. HP have shown that a premium laptop like the
| Spectre definitely has a market, which is where Toshiba
| probably needed to be. They seemed to decide at some point
| that they wanted to cover the entire market, including
| budget offerings like the Satellite right up to the fancy
| touchscreen, crazy folding half-tablet Ultrabook.
|
| The last Satellite I bought all the hinges broke and the
| screen flaps about (still works though). My wife's old
| Ultrabook has a cool design idea (screen slides over the
| keyboard and folds upwards) but all the hinge gubbins are
| exposed so it looks half-finished when it's open. It has
| also decided to poop itself when Microsoft send out updates
| on a semi-regular basis and require booting from a rescue
| USB. Both of them are ancient though.
|
| Their market used to be "I'm doing business but I'm not a
| developer" types who wanted something reliable and a little
| stylish and paid a premium for it, so I suspect what
| happened is too many budget Satellites and not enough
| interesting thinking like the Ultrabooks.
| [deleted]
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| Just as every good quote eventually gets attributed to Lincoln
| or Churchill, every PC advance eventually gets attributed to
| Apple.
| macintux wrote:
| Apple does what most companies won't: focus on something and
| place heavy bets on it.
|
| I've long argued this with those who claim the current
| smartphone form factor was inevitable. Sure, companies were
| experimenting with touchscreen smartphones, but none of the
| major players like Motorola would ever have dared make just
| one phone and market the heck out of it.
|
| If someone like Nokia or Motorola had created the iPhone, it
| would have been just one of dozens of models, languishing in
| the corner of carrier retail stores because no one knew what
| to do with it.
|
| Similarly, Apple gets credit for a lot of things not because
| they invented it (e.g., USB) but because they embraced it,
| popularized it, and doubled down on it.
| bluedevil2k wrote:
| Palm? The Treo was their only phone for many years.
| kergonath wrote:
| It also had a different form factor, built around the
| graffiti scribbling thing, and completely reliant on a
| stylus and resistive screens, which were ok for the time
| (I loved mine), but were obsoleted overnight by the
| iPhone.
|
| There was also the LG Chocolate (pretty much the only
| phone with a capacitive screen released before the
| iPhone), which is a demonstration that "capacitive
| touchscreen" does not imply "iPhone form factor".
| macintux wrote:
| Palm is definitely the one company that made me hesitate
| and add the qualifier "major" to my statement.
| sbuk wrote:
| Would that be the Treo 270, Treo 180g, Treo 180 or Treo
| 90 (all released in 2002)?
| bluedevil2k wrote:
| 90 wasn't a phone, 180 and 180g were for different
| carriers if I remember correctly, and the 270 was their
| new model that replaced the 180.
| xattt wrote:
| Is there a PC manufacturer that does great trackpads?
| [deleted]
| geogra4 wrote:
| My parents had a powebook 160 when it first came out.
|
| Wonderful, high quality device that we kept for years to play
| with as kids long after the 68030 could run any modern software.
| kergonath wrote:
| Mine had a PowerBook 100. It was underpowered even at the time
| and that passive matrix screen was awful, but damn it was sexy.
| So sleek, even compared to the clunky PC laptops from the end
| of the 1990s. A fantastic piece of engineering.
| tacobelllover99 wrote:
| Portables _cringe_
| thunderbong wrote:
| Better readability -
|
| https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1449443506783543297.html
| aidenn0 wrote:
| It's absurd how much more readable that is than the twitter
| thread itself. If you had told me it was a blog post I 100%
| would have believed you up until I hit the bottom and saw it
| was on threadreader.
| StevePerkins wrote:
| It absolutely blows my mind that people try to use Twitter for
| long-form writing.
|
| Honestly, it blows my mind that people use Twitter for
| _anything at all_ , other than outrage and anxiety disorders.
| But if you do want to use an awful platform for long-form
| writing, then that's why we have Medium.
| zerkten wrote:
| They probably feel like you when preparing these too. The
| reason it excels is that a few of the individual tweets go
| viral and it drives the complete thread.
|
| Twitter could provide a long-form writing platform where you
| write the whole thing and then some tweets you want to
| package with it. I suspect they feel that this is a form of
| experimentation where any of the sets of sentences could go
| viral, but the author may be unlikely to select the correct
| ones most of the time.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| It's probably seems less commitment for the reader as well.
| Instead of a block of text upfront, a few paragraphs with a
| punchline and a thread a tap away if you are really
| interested.
|
| Certainly an interesting experiment, which can be improved
| on for sure.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| I don't get it either, I miss when everyone had their own
| blog and we used RSS. Aside from the obvious decentralized
| and readability advantages, I miss that each had a different
| design, personality, style.
|
| But I've long given up, since all the smart people chose
| Twitter to vent their minds. It's the only social media I've
| caved in to.
| Bradlinc wrote:
| I stopped reading half way through and came back to the
| comments to complain about how this was unreadable. Then I
| found your comment.Thank you.
| [deleted]
| RistrettoMike wrote:
| Never seen threadreader before, really cool. Thanks for posting
| it.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| No mention of Uncle Clive's Z88, the one that started the craze.
| reaperducer wrote:
| The Sinclair Z88 that came out five years after the
| Kyocera/Model 100/NEC/Olivetti which sold millions of units
| worldwide, while the Z88 was a regional curiosity?
|
| By the time Sinclair got on board, almost every company had a
| portable machine. Even IBM.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| Readable version for older computers:
|
| https://nitter.kavin.rocks/stevesi/status/144944350678354329...
| klelatti wrote:
| The Acorn A4 laptop was, I think, the first Arm laptop. Acorn of
| course died fairly quickly but it would be interesting to
| consider how history might have been different if it had gained
| some traction given the early Arm CPUs we're both powerful
| compared to x86 and had low power consumption.
|
| I wonder if anyone here used one of these machines?
|
| https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/22807/Acorn-A4-Lapto...
| 1cvmask wrote:
| One of the jobs that Steven Sinofsky had was to go to trade shows
| and copy best-of-breed software for Microsoft. He excelled at
| that and rose through the Microsoft ranks.
|
| A big part of Microsofts success is to copy competitors (often
| badly) and be good enough for IT managers to buy worse-of-breed
| products in a "best-of-suite" offering.
|
| Just look at how they still fail at edge cases compared to Zoom
| or how clunky they are compared to Slack. Yet they dominate those
| categories.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| easton wrote:
| That's not really their strategy anymore, it's not "bundle a
| bunch of mediocre stuff" but more "Bundle it with Exchange and
| Outlook", which is an excellent product. People will buy
| Exchange, and then the Teams button just magically pops up and
| they don't see a good enough reason to go buy Slack unless
| their employees complain too much.
| jsight wrote:
| Google does basically the same thing. Lots of other products
| become the default because they became "free" once the
| company chose gmail.
|
| Yeah, other products are better, but expensive compared to
| "$0".
| tambourine_man wrote:
| >"Exchange and Outlook", which is an excellent product
|
| I've never seen anyone compliment those products voluntarily.
| Care to elaborate why do you find them excellent?
| neilalexander wrote:
| Have you ever tried to use shared inboxes or calendars on
| any other competing system? There's an awful lot that
| Outlook and Exchange get right.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Don't get me started on Lotus Notes for email.
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| "Bundling" in some form was almost always their power move.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > A big part of Microsofts success is to copy competitors
| (often badly) and be good enough for IT managers to buy worse-
| of-breed products in a "best-of-suite" offering.
|
| This gets put out a lot but for Microsoft Office, this wasn't
| the case. By the time Office came out, Microsoft had pretty
| close to best of breed. By the mid-1990's, Word on its own was
| at least as good as, if not better than, WordPerfect. Lotus
| AmiPro was in 3rd place. Also, by the mid-1990's Excel was at
| the top in terms of spreadsheets.
|
| I think the thing that made them able to succeed was the
| experience with Excel and Word for Mac. By writing these, they
| learned a lot of lessons on how best to allow software to take
| advantage of a GUI. Then when Windows took off, they could
| apply these lessons that competitors who had mainly focused on
| their DOS based user interfaces did not learn.
| Zenst wrote:
| The ability to one-shop the whole office experience helped.
| So you could deal with microsoft for the OS and word.....etc
| or Microsoft for os and there for your WP and lots of other
| companies making support a multi number TZ experience
| compared to a one-stop shop like Microsoft.
|
| This is also around the era of NT4 becoming mature and oh,
| did they push around that. I recall getting a crazy deal in
| which was after NT4 server but they had a bundle that was
| cheaper and you got the whole Backoffice bundle (
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_BackOffice_Server )
| and of course, helped promote their ecosystem even further.
|
| So many alternative offerings just get pushed out, be it
| price or the cost of marketing to get new sales being a
| bridge too far. Many carried on in some form for while with
| their hard-core loyal users from old but even that didn't
| sustain them.
|
| I recall also IBM buying one of these word alternatives and
| trying to create their own bundle offering, but alas that and
| equally the PC market slipped thru their fingers. In part
| from their half-cocked push on OS/2, which alas never really
| got the public traction it could of got and often wonder what
| could of been upon that.
|
| > I think the thing that made them able to succeed was the
| experience with Excel and Word for Mac. By writing these,
| they learned a lot of lessons on how best to allow software
| to take advantage of a GUI. Then when Windows took off, they
| could apply these lessons that competitors who had mainly
| focused on their DOS based user interfaces did not learn.
|
| YES the whole GUI aspect really did help Microsoft push their
| offerings as they worked, but then they did have inside help
| as they knew what API's would work (and quirks) and how to
| use them ahead of others. Equally if they wanted something
| not available, they had the clout to get it added. This along
| with GUI's add one heck of overhead upon your application
| development and was a few gotcha's. I do recall having issues
| using some OCX(iirc) feature that just would bug badly and
| retorted to logging a ticket with Microsoft for them to come
| back and say, we have looked into it and yes it is broken, we
| will fix it in the new version. Which meant upgrading
| everything and kinda killed that whole project in the end as
| was a fair few of those.
|
| Whilst it didn't do heavy development with Windows back then,
| my experiences sure tainted me and I'm sure those deeper in
| that trench will have some even uglier battle stories. Maybe
| why finding out undocumented API's back then was more a thing
| as many instances of you can't do that but there is an
| undocumented API that will do that and Microsoft product
| X,y.Z....all use it to add that feature.
|
| Was interesting times and yet, was enough to put me of doing
| development upon Windows even to this day as just got burned
| too many times. SO yes, I can see how things may of played
| out for those wonderful DOS applications transitioning
| towards GUI land with Windows.
| simonh wrote:
| A really interesting example is Dropbox. Steve Jobs famously
| made them an offer which they refused, and told them what they
| had was a feature, not a product.
|
| Since then a lot of the major tech companies have rolled out
| file sync products, arguably not because they particularly want
| to be in that business, but because they need to be. File sync
| is just a natural thing we need to be able to do and lots of
| systems we use need to be able to do it.
|
| Dropbox seem to have carved out a sustainable business as the
| non-aligned independent that integrates with everyone. Long may
| that continue.
| judge2020 wrote:
| But IT admins don't buy things because they're independent.
| The cost of using Microsoft 365 with Onedrive is $0 since
| it's included in all retail packages, while doing the same
| for Dropbox is $12.50/user/month (the same per-use price as
| the M365 plan that includes Office applications). Unless IT
| is part of a tech-driven company where leadership knows the
| benefit of investing extra money into IT Ops, the budget
| doesn't allow for redundant solutions like this.
| webwielder2 wrote:
| As a 7 year old I loved watching the Apple commercials that came
| on the Apple Multimedia Starter Kit CD-ROM. I still think this is
| the greatest commercial ever made:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1hSU_qz5Es
| xattt wrote:
| One thing that is absent from today's technoculture but was
| pervasive in the 1990s is the fact that the use of _any_
| feature that might have required an intermediate /advanced
| level of technical knowledge seemed subversive. Also, the
| feeling that big institutions seemed obtuse and unaware of
| advancements in technology. _You want to what on an airplane?
| What's a network?_
|
| Now, it's normalized and might be perceived mildly annoying at
| worst (ie asking someone to AirDrop a photo for better quality
| versus them messaging a quality-reduced photo to you).
| protomyth wrote:
| Didn't Sony have some involvement in the design of this portable?
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Mentioned here:
| https://twitter.com/stevesi/status/1449443643404607492
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