In the eighties, our arms ached from lugging around big, heavy portable computers everywhere. Some companies started making laptops, but the real game changer were notebooks made by NEC and Compaq. Where was Apple in all of this? They stumbled with the Mac Portable, but a resourceful team had a plan: make the smallest, most powerful notebooks on the market. Listen in to learn about the birth of the PowerBook and how Apple changed laptop history.
Sources / Notes:
Alan Kay’s Dynabook paper MacUser December 1991 Birth of the PowerBook, Low End Mac CHM Oral History of David Levy The WalkMac Apple: the inside story of intrigue, egomania, and business blunders by Jim Carlton Fortune Magazine Apple Industrial Design with Bob Brunner and John Mannock Design Management Institute Case Study: Apple PowerBook Design Quality and Time To Market TidBITS PowerBook 100 RecallContact Us You can find Dan on twitter @kefkafloyd and Jake on twitter @jakepugh. We’re available on your podcast platform of choice, and if you like us, a five star rating or review would be greatly appreciated. You can visit our website at icongardenshow.com or post in the Ars thread by going to bit.ly/tigsthread. Some interstitial music used in this episode is courtesy of the Youtube Audio Library and it was composed by Jeremy Blake. Thanks for listening, and we’ll catch you next time.
