Why the First Laptop Had Such a Hard Time Catching On

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/why-the-first-laptop-had-such-a-hard-time-catching-on-hint-sexism/262220/

by yarone • 14 years ago

109 70 14 years ago

theatlantic.com

yarone• 14 years ago

Reminder of the sociological / human factors to be considered when launching new products.

bajsejohannes• 14 years ago

How is this specific to laptops? Seems like just the same would apply to a desktop computer.

lukifer• 14 years ago

I had the same thought. My presumption would be that laptops are inherently personal, since the whole point is to take it with you, whereas you could hand off a desktop to an underling and make them work it for you.

csense• 14 years ago

From the article, it sounds like the laptop marketers were targeting top executives, presumably because (1) they travel a lot and (2) they have command of a big enough budget to spend $8K of company money on a tech toy.

For those who don't travel, it would have been difficult to justify the greater expense.

masklinn• 14 years ago

I'm guessing desktops were significantly cheaper, and could therefore start from the bottom where people were younger, didn't really care or had other issues (and didn't have secretaries to start with). The price of early laptops meant only higher-up execs were able to get them, and those were generally older men who had had secretaries most of their life (or who had just had secretaries attached to them, these secretaries becoming a status symbol of having "made it")

njharman• 14 years ago

First (business) desktop computers (I'm guessing / basing on my knowledge from back then, visacalc!) weren't targeted at execs. They were target at accounting who were use to 10key and probably one of the early adopters of mainframes+terminals.

primitur2• 14 years ago

Good point. Well what I think, in the very first marketing round about laptops in the 80's, the big pitch was portability, and that mean: flights. Most "portable computers" in that era were for flying around the country, they had to be built for check-in.

And who takes flights around the country? Executives.

The secretaries have their computers on their desktop, they stay at home. So the computer had to be pitched as useful, somehow, to an Executive traveller..

There was really a sort of division about the very expensive computers being something you took with you instead of locked at home at the office, at the very beginning, but nowadays of course usability has demolished the cultural head and we've all got mega-buck$ invested in our thin, delicate slabs.

joezydeco• 14 years ago

It certainly did.

I convinced my dad to buy an Apple ][ for the family, primarily by demonstrating VisiCalc to him. He caught on right away, but it was painful watching him hunt-and-peck on the keyboard for years while he started to learn to type.

darklajid4• 14 years ago

Meta: (Ignore if that is too annoying)

Can anyone explain the capitals in this title? I'm guessing they are correct. But they look erratic / strange / stupid from this pov. Not my native language, so where can I read up on how you'd decide whether to hit shift or not - hoping that it isn't arbitrary.

lutusp3• 14 years ago

> Can anyone explain the capitals in this title? I'm guessing they are correct.

There's no "correct" outcome for an all-caps title, it's a stylistic choice. Neither right nor wrong. Another example of a stylistic choice is The Register's oft-exercised habit of emphasizing! a! title! like! this!.

> where can I read up on how you'd decide whether to hit shift or not - hoping that it isn't arbitrary.

Sorry, you can't read a rule on this practice, Because It Is Entirely Arbitrary.

StavrosK2• 14 years ago

For the curious: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/09/30/yahoo_scheider_ko_pi...

toyg• 14 years ago

I thought El Reg did that only for Yahoo! or other silly exclamation-mark-including brands...?

Not that I read it much, of late -- could never stand Orlowski, and recently the site has been defined as "the Daily Mail of Tech", so it's not like I have much of an incentive...

darklajid4• 14 years ago

Thanks a lot. For me these are stumble blocks (trained to pay attention to caps for too long) and carry meaning, so .. I tried to find a pattern. And failed.

hollerith2• 14 years ago

>Sorry, you can't read a rule on this practice, Because It Is Entirely Arbitrary.

Don't say that.

Since most newspapers and magazines are struggling to survive, maybe they don't do it any more, but for decades they made all their publications conform to style guides which were often as lengthy as books. Other organizations and communities of writers also used style guides. Three famous style guides:

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Dictionary_of_Modern_English_... a.k.a. Fowler's; and

(2) A Chicago Manual of style (which might have been limited mainly to academic writing; do not remember); and

(3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style a.k.a. Strunk and White.

Also the New York Times maintained their own style guide, which I seem to recall was also sold to the general public. The whole point of these guides was to make written English more consistent.

As to the specific question of capitalization style, there is one very dominant style: namely, articles ("the", "a" and "an"), prepositions and conjunctions ("and", "or", "but" and maybe one more I cannot remember right now) are not capitalized, but everything else is.

eru• 14 years ago

The title isn't all caps.

StavrosK2• 14 years ago

I generally don't capitalize words such as "a", "the", "of", etc. This isn't short words, but mostly words that are articles or conjunctions. However, as another commenter said, it's a stylistic choice.

stordoff• 14 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_case#Headings_and_public...

darklajid4• 14 years ago

Now _that's_ helpful (although it boils down to 'yeah, do whatever you like' as well, just like the other commenters pointed out already, albeit with a little more background information)

Stratoscope2• 14 years ago

I think I know what may look strange about the capitalization of this title. First, here is a good guide (there are many others if you search for "title case"):

http://www.grammar-monster.com/lessons/capital_letters_title...

So, "a" and "the" are not capitalized because they are articles. But what about "on"? That's a preposition, isn't it? And according to this (and most) style guides you don't capitalize prepositions.

But in this title, "on" is not being used as a preposition. It's part of a compound verb, "catching on". Verbs are capitalized, so both those words are capitalized. Another good clue here is that "on" is the last word in the title, so it's not likely to be a preposition ("pre-position").

There is a subtlety here: "catch on" or "catching on" is often a compound verb meaning "becoming popular", but in a different context, it may be a simple verb and preposition. Consider these two headlines:

Sticky Notes are Catching On (becoming popular, "catching on" is a compound verb so both words capitalized)

Sticky Notes are Catching on Tables (getting stuck to tables, "catching" is a simple verb and "on" is a preposition, so "on" is not capitalized)

Stratoscope2• 14 years ago

The two examples at the end of my earlier comment inadvertently illustrated a point several others have made: there is no one single standard for how to capitalize a title.

Specifically, I didn't capitalize "are", but the page I linked to says you should capitalize "Are". So using their style (which is probably what I'd use too if I'd been paying more attention), my examples would be:

Sticky Notes Are Catching On

Sticky Notes Are Catching on Tables

Either way would be correct under one style guide or another. Wikipedia has a chart comparing various title case styles:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_case#Headings_and_public... (edit: stordoff posted this earlier)

Here's an interesting article on About.com:

http://grammar.about.com/od/tz/g/Title-Case.htm

And an online title case converter (with its own set of rules):

http://individed.com/code/to-title-case/

As I mentioned, this search will tell you more than you ever wanted to know on the topic:

https://www.google.com/search?q=title+case

forgottenpaswrd• 14 years ago

More than sexism it is statusism.

I could understand secretaries instantaneously loosing respect if they see their bosses typing with one finger.

It happened to me with one operator of a lathe when he discovered I had no idea or cared how to program it because I was "engineer"(I had other work to do). I had to study the thing on a weekend for regaining the respect from those people on my team.

Imagine being in the war and your life depends on a person(e.g a sergeant) and the only thing you know about this person is that he is incompetent on what you know to do well... not good.

glesica• 14 years ago

This hits the nail on the head in my experience. As "technical" people (I think that describes most HN readers) it is common to find ourselves working with at least a few people who are less adept at various technologies. In some cases this doesn't really make a difference, but I have often found it to be very frustrating.

A boss or coworker who can't use a computer is largely forgivable. A boss or coworker who refuses to learn is hard to respect and, by extension, hard to work for or with.

akgerber• 14 years ago

Of course, in that time even more than today, sex & status were deeply intertwined. It wasn't a coincidence that the secretarial pool was all female and the executive suite was all male: women had typing classes in school, went to secretarial school, and got jobs as secretaries or other low-status positions; men became got jobs as clerks or went to college, and if the bosses liked them, they were promoted to executive positions. There usually wasn't much of a career track from secretary to executive.

redthrowaway• 14 years ago

>women had typing classes in school

I'm wondering when this changed to include all kids. I remember doing Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing on my home computer at around 6, then again at school in grade 2. This would have been in the early 90s, and every kid at my school took typing classes once a week. By grade 3 or 4 they were teaching us Basic on the Apple IIe. Around that time as well, school assignments had to be typed and printed off for submission. Did other people have the same experience, with computers being a part of your official early education?

justin66• 14 years ago

> it is statusism

That's not actually a word. It seems probable you meant classism or something similar.

emmelaich• 14 years ago

It's definitely related to gender. There were never any males in the typing pool. As a male with an office, if you had a machine with a keyboard, it would have been seen as effeminate.

And quirky -- why would you type when you can have someone do it for you?

primitur2• 14 years ago

This is a really cute story for me personally, as an old-time Grid user. In my youth, I was a computer-ops tech, of the travelling variety.

I was lucky enough to be given a Grid compass machine to do my job in the 80's. It was a godsend as a remote tech who had to go places and do things to computers while maintaining a security profile. My own terminal, my own stash of notes/profiles/logs, etc. All had to be checked in, after a 7 or 8 day trip around the US to all and sundry terminal locations.

Damn thing was heavy, and had very little RAM/storage, all things considered. I was lucky to have a stack of floppies for it, of course, but that was more bulk to the luggage.

It was one of the first machines on which I built my C chops, as a coder. I've still got muscle-memory for its dodgy * location, I think.

I lugged the thing around for years, then .. suddenly .. back at HQ .. the Atari Portfolio.

Instant upgrade.

I still use an OrangeRedAmber as my term color. Oh, how I'd love to have a few Grid screens around to plug into things, it was truly a bask of radiative glare.. ;)

mbesto2• 14 years ago

So, I guess part of the story we're supposed to take away here is that the tablet and the smartphone should be no different, right? Laptops/desktops will be replaced by smartphones and tablets, right? History repeats itself right?

The difference I see is that the smartphone and the tablet all use laptop concepts (keyboard, visual display, etc). People literally went from not knowing how to type (which is NOT intuitive) to typing on a keyboard. The biggest difference now is multi-touch. But the reason multi-touch caught on, was because it was a intuitive interface to computer-human interaction. I had to take a course in grade school in order to use a keyboard, I don't for multi-touch.

In other words, the laptop (and as people have pointed out, actually the desktop) was a revolution in technology. Mobile devices seem to be much more an evolution.

delinka• 14 years ago

"So, I guess part of the story we're supposed to take away here is that the tablet and the smartphone should be no different, right?"

I think that's a pretty big assumption. But you are completely correct about touch and intuition.

sspiff2• 14 years ago

"The biggest difference now is multi-touch"

You should try using a single touch keyboard. Keyboards are very much multitouch.

I am yet to see a more useful reason for multitouch to exist than text input. Not that one gesture everyone has now been imprinted with. Something else that's not gimmicky.

Please give me an example, because despite being part of the touchscreen and multitouch early adopters (I had a Palm, five different WinMo devices, and imported a G1 before Android phones came to Europe), I am yet to see one thing I (or anyone else) can do faster on a multitouch panel than I can do with a keyboard and mouse. I'm not saying these legacy input devices are perfect, but stupid simple glass panels are definitely more cumbersome for this aging mind.

mgkimsal• 14 years ago

"I am yet to see one thing I (or anyone else) can do faster on a multitouch panel than I can do with a keyboard and mouse."

Slice through a banana, pear and pineapple at the same time on Fruit Ninja.

mbesto2• 14 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-touch

Are we talking about the same multitouch?

I do agree with you about "I am yet to see a more useful reason for multitouch to exist than text input." to an extent.

Three examples that are much easier on multi-touch:

1. Google Maps (pinch, zoom, pan)

2. Images (pan, zoom, slide-next)

3. Scrolling large lists

nsns• 14 years ago

It almost seems like it's the opposite these days: apple's taking the keyboard off a smartphone convinced non tech savy people to buy one.

jacquesm• 14 years ago

The first laptop, for people with very large laps:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_1

zwieback• 14 years ago

I remember when one of our Apple ][ user group members brought an Osborne 1 to a meeting. We just about had fistfights to get a close view of the thing.

marshray• 14 years ago

A few possibly-relevant memories from 1983:

* I knew a few top execs who were happy to type (this was a software company). They (and many others of us in the company) had dial-up terminals at home. These were used to access the company mainframe.

* The main business cases in 1983 for the PC were typing letters/memos, primitive filing, and spreadsheets. These are things that top execs typically delegated to secretaries and middle managers.

* This thing cost more than multiple automobiles.

* The Military used male secretaries for typing. They also had more money than they knew what to do with in 1983.

kokey• 14 years ago

Most importantly, I think, is that you could employ a secretary or two for a year or two for the same money, and they would do the typing for you.

dsr_2• 14 years ago

How many secretaries do you see on _Mad Men_?

The big boss might have two. Everyone is who is anyone has his own. You are clearly a junior manager if you share a secretary. Only the peons type.

This changed. It changed slowly. For years, senior people did not type their own email, or even read it on a screen. A secretary would print it out, and the exec would dictate, live or to a recorded, any responses. Did the exec know how to type? No. Why should he? Having a keyboard is a sign that you don't have any power.

Long nails indicate that you don't do manual work. High heels mean you don't walk long distances. An expensive watch means you can afford one -- it tells the time about as accurately and about as reliably as a mid-priced or cheap watch.

How does it change? Very simply: when the people who are high-status do a certain thing, people who want to be like them copy it. When technical entrepreneurs became rich, people copied them. Do successful Wall Streeters carry Blackberries? Everybody else did, too.

Status, yes. And sexism, too: typing is women's work. Low status.

harshreality• 14 years ago

Handicap principle?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handicap_principle

cromulent• 14 years ago

Indeed. 10 years after this, in 1992, the general manager of my firm was refusing a computer on his desk as "it looks unprofessional".

bane• 14 years ago

"Having a keyboard is a sign that you don't have any power."

Just as importantly, today not knowing how to use a computer is a bad sign in the workplace, one that will cost you your job.

I contract my time at a place with a fair number of very senior people (age 50+). A few years ago it wasn't like that, most people were under 35 and having grown up with computers had a reasonable mastery of basic computer skills.

When the contract changed the client desired a more skilled labor pool and thus amped up the requirements for most of the positions. What happened? A flood of computer illiterate old-school types who tried to get the few remaining "youngsters" to do the bulk of the work.

It went over very poorly with the younger workers, the contractor and in the end the customer. It was made known that if you didn't have basic computer skills you wouldn't have a job...to be verified by a test before beginning regular work (given after the new hire training period). The result? Something like 85% turnover in the aged 50+ pool inside of six months. The group they have now is not only much better at these basic skills, but a better cross section of truly needed skills anyway.

Watching all this go down made me think of my father, who in his late 60s purchased his first computer (in the late early 2000s) and had the intellectual curiosity to spend hours every day learning to type, fiddling with various settings, changing the screen savers and background graphics...till he was literate enough that he could do pretty much whatever he wanted to do with the machine. He knew the times had changed and it was up to him to get his act together.

mtoddh• 14 years ago

For years, senior people did not type their own email, or even read it on a screen.

Reading this I can't help but think of the old "hello world" computer program humor [1] predicated on the idea that the higher the you went up the corporate hierarchy the less computer savvy that person would be:

    New Manager
    ===================

    10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"
    20 END

    Middle Manager
    ===================

    mail -s "Hello, world." bob@b12
    Bob, could you please write me a program that prints "Hello, world."?
    I need it by tomorrow.
    ^D

    Senior Manager
    ===================

    % zmail jim
    I need a "Hello, world." program by this afternoon.

    Chief Executive
    ===================

    % letter
    letter: Command not found.
    % mail
    To: ^X ^F ^C
    % help mail
    help: Command not found.

    % damn!
    !: Event unrecognized
    % logout

[1] http://www.infiltec.com/j-h-wrld.htm

w1ntermute• 14 years ago

Well, if you want to use Mad Men as a reference, in S04E12 ("Blowing Smoke"), you can see Don touch typing on a typewriter (at his home, though, not the office) quite proficiently at around the 30 minute mark.

dllthomas• 14 years ago

> An expensive watch [...] tells the time about as accurately and about as reliably as a mid-priced or cheap watch.

Actually, there's a huge difference in the accuracy of high-end and cheap watches. The cheap watches are way better.

smountcastle• 14 years ago

So is there something happening right now that older folks are rejecting due to sociological factors but the next generation is embracing?

dsr_2• 14 years ago

Sure. Let's look at our own industry cluster.

What is superficial, but denotes status among hackers?

Having an expensive standing desk when everyone else sits.

Having a shaved head when that's not the societal norm. Having long hair (male) or particularly short hair (female). Interestingly dyed hair for either.

Extreme coffee ordering used to be a status marker; now it's widespread and isn't, so much. What was once an indicator that you lived in a rich urban core is now an indicator that Starbucks has opened a branch in your WalMart.

Running a Mac when the company standard was a Windows box; running an Air when the standard was an MBP. The first generation iPhone, and for a couple of weeks, the most recent. (Then everybody else has them.)

Claiming more physical space is a status marker; humans seem to be wired for that along with all the other primates. Having more space and not doing anything with it is a more powerful marker.

Siri and similar voice-recognition assistants could become the new secretaries. If they improve significantly, look for an always-on version that looks for a keyword trigger and talks back through a speaker. Having an invisible servant would be a serious status marker, but only if it becomes both reliable and ostentatious. Having the quiet space necessary to do this regularly is a marker by itself.

tomjen3• 14 years ago

Having servants has always been a status marker, but I doubt siri+ will be that, since it will almost certainly be launched for either Android or iPhone which means that everybody will get it soon after it has become available.

salgernon2• 14 years ago

>>Siri and similar voice-recognition assistants could become the new secretaries. If they improve significantly, look for an always-on version that looks for a keyword trigger and talks back through a speaker. Having an invisible servant would be a serious status marker, but only if it becomes both reliable and ostentatious. Having the quiet space necessary to do this regularly is a marker by itself.

I like your list, but doesn't the low incremental cost of a virtualized assistant, as available to Joe Biden as Joe the Plumber, take this out as a marker?

I suspect most markers going forward are going to have to be physical things that are more rare, and frankly somewhat useless. 6 legged genetically engineered green pocket pigs with stupid haircuts and matching sunglasses kind of thing.

hollerith2• 14 years ago

I have no trouble believing everything in the OP.

My dad had 2 secretaries when I was growing up in the 1970s. He was a mechanical engineer with an MBA. And he didn't know how to type.

kephra• 14 years ago

This reminds me at: forget it: Men can not type!

http://kephra.de/blog/Programmiererinnen.html#en

rickmb• 14 years ago

Sexism aside, marketeers should know better by now than to market innovations to business executives. They are the last people to adopt new technology, and even if it does happen it often comes with a stigma that hinders wider adoption, because the product becomes associated with "the suits".

001sky• 14 years ago

Counter-example: the blackberry in 2002.

fallous• 14 years ago

Um, they might want to read up on a little machine that came out within a year of the Grid... namely, the TRS-80 Model 100.

hnriot• 14 years ago

The Trash-80 wasn't a laptop! They were popular though, I had one. My first memories of laptops were from Compaq, and they were not flat but more brick like, with fold down keyboards and big slots for the floppy drives. I carried one of these around for a few years (consulting), eventually it was replaced with a toshiba T1000 and its offspring.

bitwize• 14 years ago

The "Trash-80" (TRS-80 Model I) was not a laptop, but the Radio Shack Model 100 most certainly qualified. It was a brick -- no clamshell -- with a full-travel QWERTY keyboard on the bottom and a rinky-dink nonbacklit calculator display on top. It came with BASIC and some other rudimentary applications. The OS was menu-driven, and was the last significant piece of software that Bill Gates personally contributed to.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Model_100

Writers loved these things because they lasted for ages on a set of AA cells.

salgernon2• 14 years ago

There is still a market for them, and they go for about $40 on ebay. They have a great keyboard and run for weeks on batteries. I have a policy of giving them to children for their tenth birthday, along with a book on BASIC programming.

figital• 14 years ago

I had one of these as a second hand gift from a friend of my dad's who probably wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole (more like a 3rd generation one) and it was my primary machine circa 1989-1994. I remember feeling very uncomfortable the few times I brought it to class in college. Built like a brick-shithouse. The keyboard was magnificent. I think the killer apps around then for me were AutoMenu, WordPerfect, Turbo Pascal, and the built-in modem. Wish I would have saved this with the rest of my retro-stash but it wound up just getting lost during a move.

msrpotus• 14 years ago

I feel like someday I'll be saying this about my iPad.

Why the First Laptop Had Such a Hard Time Catching On

Related Stories