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Speaker 1: Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio.

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Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,

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Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with my Heart Radio

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Speaker 1: and I love all things tech and I did an

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Speaker 1: episode about the early history of laptops, and I talked

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Speaker 1: about the emergence of portable computers in general. It took

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Speaker 1: a surprisingly long time to get to the clamshell form

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Speaker 1: factor that we tend to associate with the word laptop. Okay,

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Speaker 1: it really actually wasn't that surprising, because when you're displayed

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Speaker 1: technology of the time relies heavily on cathode ray tube

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Speaker 1: or CRT monitors, you can't exactly slim that down. Now,

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Speaker 1: these are the old style monitors. They're also old style

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Speaker 1: CRT televisions, which are those big boxy things, the really heavy,

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Speaker 1: boxy monitors. And in fact, I'm gonna start this episode

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Speaker 1: by explaining what's going on inside those old sets so

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Speaker 1: that we can understand why they're so big in the

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Speaker 1: first place, and why that meant that the early boordable

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Speaker 1: computers were pretty hefty things. So if you listen to

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Speaker 1: that last episode, you heard me talk about how computers

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Speaker 1: used to take up entire rooms or sometimes entire floors

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Speaker 1: of a building. These machines were massive, largely because the

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Speaker 1: components that designers used were themselves big. The parts that

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Speaker 1: the computer were made of were large. There were no transistors,

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Speaker 1: especially no transistors that are down to the nano scale.

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Speaker 1: Back in those days. Circuits were actually made up of

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Speaker 1: big wires and stuff like vacuum tubes, and those took

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Speaker 1: up a lot of space. A CRT display or CRT

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Speaker 1: television has something similar inside of it. The screen you

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Speaker 1: look at is actually the end of that vacuum tube

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Speaker 1: like structure. In fact, I would argue that the cathode,

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Speaker 1: ray tube, the vacuum tube, and even the lightbulb are

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Speaker 1: all closely related. They are all components that have a

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Speaker 1: filament inside them. The filament heats up when you pass

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Speaker 1: electricity through it. They all have glass that surround the filament,

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Speaker 1: And what we're really interested in is the energy that

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Speaker 1: that filament gives off as a result of being heated. Now,

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Speaker 1: with lightbulbs, which are not a vacuum, that is one

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Speaker 1: major difference between them and vacuum tubes and c RT s.

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Speaker 1: But with light bulbs, the energy it gives off is

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Speaker 1: drum roll, please light. The filament heats up due to

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Speaker 1: that electrical resistance until it's hot enough to glow. And

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Speaker 1: with cathode ray tubes, it's not light, it's electrons, so

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Speaker 1: we'll start super basic. Electrons are, of course, those negatively

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Speaker 1: charged sub atomic particles, and typically we find them in

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Speaker 1: an orbit around an atomic nucleus. The atomic nucleus has

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Speaker 1: positively charged protons, and those attract electrons because opposite charges

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Speaker 1: attract one another and like charges repel one another. Well,

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Speaker 1: if you start to pour energy into an atom, then

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Speaker 1: you're going to start pushing electrons further out from that nucleus.

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Speaker 1: The electrons furthest out would be the ones that would

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Speaker 1: be affected. They would move into energy levels energy shells

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Speaker 1: further out from the nucleus. So if you pour enough

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Speaker 1: energy and you can actually pop that electron right off

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Speaker 1: and you ionize the atom. In fact, that's kind of

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Speaker 1: why we worry about ionizing radiation. It has this sort

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Speaker 1: of energy that can do this. It can turn atoms

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Speaker 1: into ions. Those would be atoms that have a net charge,

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Speaker 1: whether positive or negative, due to either losing or gaining

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Speaker 1: electrons compared to the number of protons. So electric current

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Speaker 1: is the flow of electrons. Well, you know, actually that's

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Speaker 1: that's only partly correct, as you could have a flow

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Speaker 1: of protons in something like a plasma and that would

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Speaker 1: technically be an electric current too, because electric current is

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Speaker 1: really concerned with the movement of electric charge, not whether

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Speaker 1: or not the charge is positive or negative. But we

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Speaker 1: can leave that behind because times out of a hundred

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Speaker 1: when we talk about electric current, we're talking about electrons. Now,

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Speaker 1: as I mentioned earlier, the screen on a television is

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Speaker 1: the end of the cathode ray tube. So a television

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Speaker 1: screen is just a very very wide tube ending the

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Speaker 1: other end is very narrow. Indeed, so at that opposite end,

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Speaker 1: the opposite side from the screen, way back inside the

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Speaker 1: television or the computer monitor is the cathode and the

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Speaker 1: electron gun. So the cathode is the negative terminal. It's

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Speaker 1: the thing that emits electrons when you turn on the power.

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Speaker 1: So the inside of the the CRT, the actual tube,

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Speaker 1: is a vacuum. That means that the electrons that are

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Speaker 1: emitted can move freely through that space. There's no air

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Speaker 1: molecules that the electrons could potentially interact with. That's why

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Speaker 1: you have to have a vacuum inside of a vacuum

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Speaker 1: tube or a CRT is to let these electrons flow

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Speaker 1: freely and not have to worry about them interacting with

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Speaker 1: something else. You have the anode or the positively charged

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Speaker 1: terminal of the CRT towards the screen side, so that's

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Speaker 1: what's attracting the electrons towards the screen. As the beam

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Speaker 1: of electrons hit the backside of the screen, it impacts phosphor.

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Speaker 1: Uh So, the inside of the screen has a phosphor

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Speaker 1: coating on it. So when an electron hits phosphor, the

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Speaker 1: phosphor ends up being quote unquote excited. And it's not

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Speaker 1: because you're settling down to watch Tiger King or whatever. No,

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Speaker 1: the electron imparts energy to the phosphor, and the phosphor

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Speaker 1: luminesses as a result, So that means it gives off light.

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Speaker 1: And there's a lot more to it than what I

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Speaker 1: just described, but I've done full episodes on it, and

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Speaker 1: it would take a long time to go into all

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Speaker 1: the details, but here the big takeaways. Before companies had

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Speaker 1: found ways to bring the manufacturing costs down for stuff

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Speaker 1: like l c D displays and to get it at

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Speaker 1: a level of resolution that would be suitable for a

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Speaker 1: computer screen. The CRT was the go to, otherwise you

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Speaker 1: would just have a prohibitively expensive computer because the l

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Speaker 1: c D manufacturing process was still relatively new. So having

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Speaker 1: a giant vacuum tube also meant it was really hard

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Speaker 1: to make a device that incorporated a screen and have

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Speaker 1: it be portable because just the nature of the tube

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Speaker 1: meant the screen had to be a pretty decent size.

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Speaker 1: And what's more, because the CRT requires a vacuum, the

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Speaker 1: monitors or television sets had to be extra dirty to

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Speaker 1: withstand the tremendous difference in atmospheric pressure between the inside

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Speaker 1: of the CRT and the outside world. So old televisions

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Speaker 1: and old computer monitors are super heavy because they had

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Speaker 1: to be. Engineers had to make them out of sturdy stuff,

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Speaker 1: including thick glass for those screens, and the bigger the display,

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Speaker 1: the thicker the glass had to be, and glass will

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Speaker 1: add a lot of weight to a device in a hurry.

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Speaker 1: So while I did express some surprise that took so

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Speaker 1: long for someone to come up with the clamshell design

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Speaker 1: for portable computers, in reality, it's not that big of

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Speaker 1: a surprise at all. Because l C d screens. Screens

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Speaker 1: that didn't require this cathode ray tube technology had not

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Speaker 1: really been a viable option for very long. Now, in

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Speaker 1: the last episode, I left off with the Macintosh Portable,

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Speaker 1: Apple's first attempt at making a laptop, and ultimately that

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Speaker 1: machine did not sell very well. It was heavy, it

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Speaker 1: was bulky, it was extremely expensive. But this was also

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Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine, a time when it was still more

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Speaker 1: common for the average household to not have a computer

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Speaker 1: at all. In fact, in nineteen nine, only fifteen percent

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Speaker 1: of households in America owned a computer, according to Statista

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Speaker 1: dot com. The vast majority of that fifteen percent likely

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Speaker 1: owned a desktop, so portable computers were, in general a

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Speaker 1: very tiny slice of a still relatively tiny market. The

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Speaker 1: same year that Apple launched their failed first laptop, another

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Speaker 1: company called n e C began a new chapter in

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Speaker 1: the laptop saga. And I'll call this chapter the notebook. Now,

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Speaker 1: this is not the two thousand four drama starring Rachel

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Speaker 1: McAdams and Ryan Gosling. Instead, notebook is a subcategory of

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Speaker 1: laptop computers. And we're kind of back to that same

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Speaker 1: problem I mentioned in the last episode, you know, the

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Speaker 1: one where how do we distinguish between something like the

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Speaker 1: difference between a hill and a mountain. You know, you

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Speaker 1: normally would say a mountain is taller and steeper than

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Speaker 1: a hill, but it really can't just be elevation. There's

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Speaker 1: some things that we call hills that are taller than

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Speaker 1: some other things that we call mountains, So it gets

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Speaker 1: really subjective. Well, the same can be true in notebook

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Speaker 1: and laptop anyway. Generally speaking, notebooks are supposed to be smaller,

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Speaker 1: more portable versions of laptops, which are already supposed to

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Speaker 1: be portable. They're also supposed to be less powerful, or

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Speaker 1: they tend to be less powerful. That's usually a trade

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Speaker 1: off in order to lighten the load and slim down

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Speaker 1: the form factor. You do that partly by not including

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Speaker 1: so many features, and that in turn brings down the

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Speaker 1: weight of the device. The size limit of the device

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Speaker 1: gets reduced, and you also can charge less for it.

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Speaker 1: It costs less to make and you can charge less

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Speaker 1: when you're selling them. They tend to be positioned in

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Speaker 1: the market as more of a personal computer. The full

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Speaker 1: lap top would be geared more toward business times. Now,

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Speaker 1: I would argue that these distinctions are so subjective as

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Speaker 1: to be almost meaningless, like one person's laptop could be

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Speaker 1: another person's notebook, and vice versa, and form does not

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Speaker 1: always dictate function. There are people who will use a

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Speaker 1: hefty portable computer that you would never call a notebook,

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Speaker 1: kind of like the one I'm on right now. This

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Speaker 1: one is a beefy alien ware gaming laptop that I've

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Speaker 1: got all my notes on. It's quite heavy, and they'll

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Speaker 1: use it to do light work like word processing, which

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Speaker 1: I could do on any computer, especially since I'm using

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Speaker 1: a web based UH service for all of my word processing.

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Speaker 1: It's not even a program that's running natively on my computer.

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Speaker 1: I could use anything, but I'm using this big, old

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Speaker 1: beefy monster here instead. In fact, I'm sure if my

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Speaker 1: computer had a heart, that heart would be breaking right

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Speaker 1: now because I'm using it to type out notes rather

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Speaker 1: than blast zombies and do maternal But I digress anyway.

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Speaker 1: The word book got some traction as various tech journalists

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Speaker 1: started to use that term kind of in an effort

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Speaker 1: to just make an easy distinction between lightweight laptops and

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Speaker 1: the big ones. So notebooks are a type of laptop

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Speaker 1: that tend to be lighter, thinner, smaller, and less powerful

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Speaker 1: than their larger counterparts. An ec ultra Light fit into

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Speaker 1: that category nicely. While other laptops like the Macintosh Portable

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Speaker 1: we're tipping the scales at sixteen pounds or about seven

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Speaker 1: point three kilograms, the Ultra Light was just four point

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Speaker 1: four pounds or two kilograms. When closed, the ultra Light

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Speaker 1: measured one point four inches thick, that's about three point

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Speaker 1: six centimeters. The CPU ran at eight point one four

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Speaker 1: mega hurts. It had six of RAM for system memory,

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Speaker 1: and it also relied on a non volatile battery backed

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Speaker 1: solid state memory for storage, which was kind of interesting.

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Speaker 1: I mean this was before really the rise of solid

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Speaker 1: state drives. You wouldn't see that come around until a

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Speaker 1: little later, and they were really expensive. But this was

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Speaker 1: a way of having a lightweight, uh long term memory

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Speaker 1: storage solution that didn't require moving parts. The standard Ultra

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Speaker 1: Light could store one hole megabyte of data on the

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Speaker 1: solid state memory, so it wasn't huge by any stretch

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Speaker 1: of the imagination. Of course, back in the day, I

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Speaker 1: remember when I thought a megabyte would be more than

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Speaker 1: I would ever need. Oh I was so dumb, still am,

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Speaker 1: but now I'm older. So while it supported a rechargeable battery,

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Speaker 1: that being the n ec ultra Light, That charge would

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Speaker 1: only last a couple of hours max. So many tech

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Speaker 1: reviewers wrote that it was kind of a waste of time.

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Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, you could have this super light portable computer,

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Speaker 1: you can easily carry it everywhere, but you'd still have

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Speaker 1: to carry a cable and plug the darned thing into

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Speaker 1: the outlet. You couldn't just use it on battery power

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Speaker 1: for you know, a full day. So what's the point?

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Speaker 1: I find that pretty funny today, because these days I

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Speaker 1: cannot take any laptop with me anywhere without the cable

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Speaker 1: and expected to last more than just a few hours.

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Speaker 1: It's funny to me how the world can change. Although

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Speaker 1: this is also due to the fact that, as we

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Speaker 1: mentioned in the last episode, even as our computers get

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Speaker 1: more powerful and more efficient, software gets more complicated and

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Speaker 1: requires more assets and resources, so it nullifies all those

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Speaker 1: advances effectively. Well, the Ultralight reviews were mixed. People thought

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Speaker 1: the lightweight was impressive, but they found the lack of

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Speaker 1: other features like a printer port that made it a problem.

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Speaker 1: How could you use it for business If you didn't

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Speaker 1: have a port for a printer, you could swap out

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Speaker 1: the floppy disk external drive for a an adapter to

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Speaker 1: connect the printer, but it wasn't easy and at a

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Speaker 1: list price of of three thousand dollars, they might have

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Speaker 1: been designed to be a personal computer for leisure, but

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Speaker 1: it wasn't priced like one. While this was all going on,

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Speaker 1: other manufacturers were also making lightweight computers, and a lot

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Speaker 1: of them were not yet following the clamshell design. The

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Speaker 1: Cambridge Z eight eight, which only weighed two pounds or

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Speaker 1: point nine kilograms, was an example of this. It was

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Speaker 1: not a clamshell laptop. Instead, this computer kind of looks

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Speaker 1: like a calculator with delusions of grandeur. There's an LCD

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Speaker 1: screen mounted above a full keyboard. The keyboard itself was

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Speaker 1: a membrane keyboard, which also meant typing on a Z

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Speaker 1: eighty eight was super quiet. You could turn on a

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Speaker 1: little digital click noise if it was too disturbing for you.

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Speaker 1: And the computer was powered by and I am not

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Speaker 1: making this up four double A batteries, and those four

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Speaker 1: double A batteries could provide a charge of up to

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Speaker 1: twenty hours of work time, which is a phenomenal design

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Speaker 1: when it comes to power efficiency. Sure this wasn't a

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Speaker 1: computer you would do stuff like play modern games on

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Speaker 1: or whatever, although people did create games for this machine.

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Speaker 1: But it was an incredibly portable, lightweight computer, and if

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Speaker 1: you needed more power, you could pop out and grab

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Speaker 1: a four pack of double A batteries and you're good. Now.

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Speaker 1: I never owned one of these myself, that I understand,

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Speaker 1: there's a small but passionate group of enthusiasts who still

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Speaker 1: tinker with them, and I think that's pretty cool. Despite

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Speaker 1: computers like the Z eight eight, the general design philosophy

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Speaker 1: around portable computers was starting to coalesce behind the clamshell

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Speaker 1: design that the old Compass Grid eleven oh one had established.

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Speaker 1: And like I said in Part one, I'm not gonna

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Speaker 1: go over every laptop. That would just be ridiculous, but

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Speaker 1: I do want to cover a few notable early laptops

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Speaker 1: that have their place in history, and one of those

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Speaker 1: would be Apple's second attempt to design a marketable portable computer.

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Speaker 1: The Macintosh Portables were a bust. They just didn't sell

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Speaker 1: very well, so the company went back to the drawing board.

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Speaker 1: In a few years before Steve Jobs would come back

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Speaker 1: to the company, Apple introduced the power Book, which was

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Speaker 1: a new clamshell style portable mac The company launched three models,

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Speaker 1: all at the same time. You had the power Book

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Speaker 1: one hundred, the power Book one forty, and then the

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Speaker 1: one seventy. The one hundred was the baseline model. The

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Speaker 1: other two had additional features. For example, the one seventy

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Speaker 1: had a much more powerful processor. The power Book one

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Speaker 1: hundred weighed ten pounds less than the portable Macintosh from

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Speaker 1: a few years earlier. I remember the portable Macintosh weighed

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Speaker 1: in at sixteen pounds. The power Book was actually much

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Speaker 1: closer to five pounds, around two point three kilograms, and

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Speaker 1: had a sixteen mega Hurts processor. It came standard with

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Speaker 1: two megabytes of memory. Were actually in the megabyte era

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Speaker 1: of RAM. Now we were in the kilobyte era for

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Speaker 1: a very long time there, and you could supplement those

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Speaker 1: two megabytes of RAM with an additional six megabytes with

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Speaker 1: a special memory module. The display measured nine inches on

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Speaker 1: the diagonal. That would be about twenty three centimeters, although

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Speaker 1: I think pretty much everyone refers to screen size and

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Speaker 1: inches these days. It was also a monochromatic screen, so

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Speaker 1: it wasn't a color display yet for portable max it

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Speaker 1: had an expansion slot for a modem, which is pretty

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Speaker 1: impressive for a laptop from and the standard amount of

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Speaker 1: storage on one of these was a twiny megabyte hard drive.

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Speaker 1: It also had max Graphic User interface or gooey, So

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Speaker 1: the regular mac os the one where you would have

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Speaker 1: icons representing different programs, the basic type of operating system

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Speaker 1: most of us are familiar with these days. But that

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Speaker 1: meant you needed a way to navigate that interface. You

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Speaker 1: know that was designed for a mouse and keyboard, but

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Speaker 1: you're talking about a laptop, a portable machine. How do

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Speaker 1: you incorporate a mouse in a portable machine. Apple's original

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Speaker 1: solution was to include a track ball on the keyboard

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Speaker 1: part of the laptop. So there was actually a little

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Speaker 1: ball that you could use and roll around to act

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Speaker 1: as your mouse, and it was positioned below the space

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Speaker 1: bar on the keyboard and in between where your hands

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Speaker 1: would be if you have your faces sitting on the

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Speaker 1: rest keys of the keyboard. That placement would become the

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Speaker 1: standard spot for stuff like touch pads in the near future.

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Speaker 1: We're gonna get the touch pads in just a second.

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Speaker 1: The MacBook would also set you back twenty five hundred dollars,

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Speaker 1: so that's about four thousand, seven hundred fifty bucks in

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Speaker 1: today's cash, so still pretty darn expensive. And this was

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Speaker 1: the basic model of the MacBook. However, the smaller form

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Speaker 1: factor and the advancements and processors and storage made it

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Speaker 1: much more attractive than the old Macintosh portable computers, and

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Speaker 1: the PowerBook line would succeed where the earlier ones failed.

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Speaker 1: By the way, in case you're curious how the one

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Speaker 1: compared against the other end of Apple's launch power books,

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Speaker 1: you know, the one seventy being the top end, I'll

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Speaker 1: give you a very quick rundown. The one seventy had

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Speaker 1: a faster processor. It ran at twenty five mega hurts,

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Speaker 1: not sixteen. It also had twice as much RAM and

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Speaker 1: standard at four megabytes, you could max that out at

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Speaker 1: eight megabytes again with a memory module. Had a larger display.

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Speaker 1: It was still a monochromatic display, but it included the

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Speaker 1: active matrix technology that Apple had introduced with those old

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Speaker 1: portable Macintoshes, which introduced much less blur. It had a

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Speaker 1: faster updating screen, and it came standard with a modem

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Speaker 1: which you would hook up to a phone line. And

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Speaker 1: this was a good old two hundred bawd modem. I'll

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Speaker 1: have to go into modems in a future episode to

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Speaker 1: talk about those days, because boy do I remember them

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Speaker 1: and I don't miss them. And uh, it cost about

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Speaker 1: four thousand, six hundred bucks, which would be around eight

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Speaker 1: seven hundred dollars in today's cash, so yawza. And the

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Speaker 1: battery life on these things was good for about three

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Speaker 1: hours max. How far we've come? All right, I've got

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Speaker 1: more to say about laptops and their history in just

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Speaker 1: a moment, but let's take a quick break. So just

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Speaker 1: before the break, I talked about how the power Book

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Speaker 1: line helped get Apple into the portable computer game, but

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Speaker 1: I also mentioned that there was a fairly short battery

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Speaker 1: life and in general that was becoming a bottleneck for

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Speaker 1: portable computers. Processor speeds were getting better, in fact, twice

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Speaker 1: as better, you might say, every eighteen months or so,

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Speaker 1: thank you Gordon Moore. Display technology was also improving. But

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Speaker 1: all these components needed electricity, and if you're designing a

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Speaker 1: desktop computer, that's not a big deal. You create a

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Speaker 1: power supply unit for the PC that's good enough to

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Speaker 1: support everything, and then you plug it into a wall

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Speaker 1: outlet and you've got a nice, steady supply of juice,

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Speaker 1: you're good to go. It doesn't really matter if the

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Speaker 1: processor is requiring a lot more power, everything's fine. But

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Speaker 1: with a laptop, particularly a laptop that is not plugged

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Speaker 1: into a wall, that is reliant upon battery power, things

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Speaker 1: are different. Batteries can only store a finite amount of

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Speaker 1: electricity before they need to be recharged, and that can

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Speaker 1: be really inconvenient if you're in the middle of working

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Speaker 1: on an important document or presentation or video or whatever.

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Speaker 1: So how do you meet the challenge of delivering upon

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Speaker 1: expectations where people have a bare minimum that they expect

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Speaker 1: from a computer, but you also avoid either a uselessly

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Speaker 1: short battery life, meaning you're always going to be plugged in,

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Speaker 1: you're never gonna worry about being unplugged because it's just not,

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Speaker 1: you know, a viable option, or you go the other way.

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Speaker 1: You end up having a great battery it just also

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Speaker 1: weighs a ton and makes your portable computer way less portable.

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Speaker 1: How do you avoid that? Well, one way is to

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Speaker 1: create a more efficient means of managing power in the

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Speaker 1: first place, and that's what Intel and Microsoft set out

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Speaker 1: to do when the two companies partnered to create advanced

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Speaker 1: power management or a p M, and a p M

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Speaker 1: is an a p I, which isn't confusing at all. Right, Okay,

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Speaker 1: So an a p I is an application programming interface,

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Speaker 1: and let me explain. And application programming interface is a

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Speaker 1: set processes, functions, libraries, and other assets that act as

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Speaker 1: a foundation for developers who want to create programs for

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Speaker 1: a specific platform, like a specific operating system. So you've

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Speaker 1: got a base set of functions on a computer that

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Speaker 1: operate directly on the hardware itself. These are processes that

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Speaker 1: might be hard coded into the physical circuits of that machine.

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Speaker 1: And in the old days, that's how all programming had

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Speaker 1: to be done. You actually had to make physical changes

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Speaker 1: to a machine by unplugging cables and plugging them into

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Speaker 1: other sockets and things like that, in order to change

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Speaker 1: the programming in order to make it do something differently,

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Speaker 1: like if you wanted to add numbers and stuff subtract them.

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Speaker 1: These days, we have layers of firmware and software that

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Speaker 1: helped manage all these interactions between the program you're running

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Speaker 1: and the underlying hardware that's supplying all the assets that

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Speaker 1: make that program possible. This way, programmers don't have to

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Speaker 1: have a d understanding of the underlying hardware. They don't

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Speaker 1: have to change that hardware. They just need to work

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Speaker 1: within the parameters of those other layers. They just need

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Speaker 1: to follow the rules. In other words, So if you'd

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Speaker 1: like an analogy, or even if you don't, I'll compare

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Speaker 1: it to building a house. So imagine you walk up

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Speaker 1: to a building site and someone's already laid a bare

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Speaker 1: concrete foundation there, but there's nothing else there. That's it.

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Speaker 1: You get there, there's a foundation, nothing else is at

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Speaker 1: your disposal. It's up to you to figure out how

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Speaker 1: to build a house. You have to get all the

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Speaker 1: stuff yourself. You have to figure it all out, maybe

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Speaker 1: through trial and error. There's no one there to help you.

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Speaker 1: That would be very frustrating. Or imagine you walk up

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Speaker 1: to a building site. There's the foundation, but there's also

401
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Speaker 1: materials for building out a frame and tools that you're

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Speaker 1: going to need to put it all together, and sets

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Speaker 1: of instructions on how those tools work, and maybe even

404
00:23:53,760 --> 00:23:57,040
Speaker 1: some examples of various styles of houses that you could

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Speaker 1: build using those materials. The second approach is way easier,

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Speaker 1: and that's generally how an API works. It gives developers

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Speaker 1: the setting and tools they need in order to build

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Speaker 1: the programs they want to run on any given operating system. Okay,

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Speaker 1: but what is a p M in particular, then, Well,

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Speaker 1: this ap I gave programmers tools that would allow them

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Speaker 1: to build software that could run in a more optimized

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Speaker 1: way on a battery operated computer like a laptop. The

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Speaker 1: a p M gives a way for each program to

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Speaker 1: communicate its individual power requirements to the main system, which

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Speaker 1: can then more precisely choose which programs get the juice

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Speaker 1: and which ones can kind of fade back into sleep mode.

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Speaker 1: The whole purpose is to conserve that sweet, sweet battery life,

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Speaker 1: extending it on a single charge as much as you

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Speaker 1: possibly can. So really, it's just kind of like an

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Speaker 1: administrator or a foreman who is looking at what is

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Speaker 1: required at any given moment, dedicating the resources that are

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Speaker 1: needed and saving everything else in the meantime. Now I

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Speaker 1: should hasten to add this really only applied to Windows

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Speaker 1: based PC's. Microsoft would support a p M until two

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Speaker 1: thousand and six and the debut of Windows Vista, whereupon

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Speaker 1: the company introduced an updated API called Advanced Configuration and

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Speaker 1: Power Interface or a c p I. So really it

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Speaker 1: was just the next generation of that kind of power

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Speaker 1: management strategy. Around this same time is when we got

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Speaker 1: an early, perhaps even the first laptop with a touchpad

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Speaker 1: to act as a mouse, and this one came from

432
00:25:36,520 --> 00:25:41,240
Speaker 1: an Italian company called Olivetti. There was also a similar

433
00:25:41,280 --> 00:25:45,600
Speaker 1: computer from Triumph Adler, German company, but that company had

434
00:25:45,640 --> 00:25:49,760
Speaker 1: already been acquired by Olivetti earlier and had previously been

435
00:25:49,760 --> 00:25:54,960
Speaker 1: owned by Volkswagen. Anyway, early touchpads weren't always the capacity

436
00:25:54,960 --> 00:25:56,760
Speaker 1: of ones that we tend to use today. In fact,

437
00:25:56,840 --> 00:26:00,360
Speaker 1: most of the time they weren't. Instead, capacity of touch

438
00:26:00,400 --> 00:26:03,479
Speaker 1: screens would come later. Capacity. By the way, those are

439
00:26:03,520 --> 00:26:06,080
Speaker 1: touch screens that work by detecting touch through a change

440
00:26:06,080 --> 00:26:11,120
Speaker 1: in electrical conductivity. We humans conduct electricity, so when our

441
00:26:11,160 --> 00:26:14,560
Speaker 1: skin makes contact with something that has an electric field,

442
00:26:15,040 --> 00:26:18,159
Speaker 1: we alter that field, and this is how smartphones and

443
00:26:18,200 --> 00:26:21,920
Speaker 1: touch screens work today. They have these grids that generate

444
00:26:21,920 --> 00:26:24,639
Speaker 1: an electric field, and when we touch them, then the

445
00:26:24,680 --> 00:26:29,720
Speaker 1: conductivity changes, and by pinpointing where that has happened on

446
00:26:29,880 --> 00:26:34,320
Speaker 1: the grid or matrix, the computer processor knows where you

447
00:26:34,359 --> 00:26:37,119
Speaker 1: are touching and what you are doing. But there is

448
00:26:37,160 --> 00:26:39,800
Speaker 1: another way to do this. Actually, technically, there are a

449
00:26:39,800 --> 00:26:41,560
Speaker 1: few other ways to make a touch screen, but when

450
00:26:41,560 --> 00:26:44,439
Speaker 1: it comes to touch pads, there's really two big ones,

451
00:26:44,920 --> 00:26:48,640
Speaker 1: so there's capacity. But then there's also resistive touch pads

452
00:26:48,720 --> 00:26:51,840
Speaker 1: or touch screens. These systems required the user to apply

453
00:26:51,960 --> 00:26:55,400
Speaker 1: a bit more pressure in order to bring two layers

454
00:26:55,520 --> 00:26:59,600
Speaker 1: of electrically resistive material into contact with one another. When

455
00:26:59,600 --> 00:27:01,920
Speaker 1: they're in a rest state, the two layers would separate

456
00:27:01,920 --> 00:27:03,399
Speaker 1: from each other. You'd have a top layer and a

457
00:27:03,440 --> 00:27:05,600
Speaker 1: bottom layer in between, which you would have maybe an

458
00:27:05,600 --> 00:27:09,800
Speaker 1: inert gas or just some air, and embedded in those

459
00:27:09,880 --> 00:27:13,720
Speaker 1: layers are electrodes. So when you push down and you

460
00:27:13,760 --> 00:27:16,199
Speaker 1: bring those two layers into contact with one another, the

461
00:27:16,240 --> 00:27:19,800
Speaker 1: electrodes touch and you get a current passing through. It

462
00:27:19,840 --> 00:27:23,080
Speaker 1: registers there as a touch. And there are pros and

463
00:27:23,160 --> 00:27:27,600
Speaker 1: cons to both resistive and capacitive touch surfaces. Resistive touch

464
00:27:27,720 --> 00:27:32,120
Speaker 1: surfaces don't need the activating point of contact to be conductive. So,

465
00:27:32,240 --> 00:27:34,439
Speaker 1: for example, let's say you have a smartphone with a

466
00:27:34,520 --> 00:27:39,760
Speaker 1: resistive touch screen. You could use a stick or a

467
00:27:39,760 --> 00:27:43,560
Speaker 1: a regular pen, not a light pen or capacitive touch pen,

468
00:27:43,680 --> 00:27:46,800
Speaker 1: nothing like that, just a regular pen or whatever, a nail.

469
00:27:47,320 --> 00:27:49,480
Speaker 1: Not that I would recommend you do that, but you

470
00:27:49,480 --> 00:27:52,400
Speaker 1: could use anything like that. In order to make contact

471
00:27:52,400 --> 00:27:56,040
Speaker 1: with the screen and get stuff to happen, you just

472
00:27:56,080 --> 00:27:57,800
Speaker 1: have to use enough pressure, which is why you probably

473
00:27:57,800 --> 00:27:59,920
Speaker 1: wouldn't want to use nail because you'd scratch up your screen.

474
00:28:00,160 --> 00:28:02,280
Speaker 1: But if you had, let's say a smartphone with a

475
00:28:02,359 --> 00:28:05,439
Speaker 1: resistive touch screen, UH, you would have a couple of

476
00:28:05,480 --> 00:28:08,679
Speaker 1: different layers between your eyes and the display that the

477
00:28:08,720 --> 00:28:12,280
Speaker 1: actual images, so they tend to be darker than capacitive

478
00:28:12,320 --> 00:28:15,000
Speaker 1: touch screens. They also tend to suffer more from wear

479
00:28:15,000 --> 00:28:17,359
Speaker 1: and tear because you're actually having to use pressure to

480
00:28:18,000 --> 00:28:21,680
Speaker 1: make contact UH and to have it registered by the device.

481
00:28:22,040 --> 00:28:25,119
Speaker 1: Capacitive touch screens don't require that kind of pressure. They

482
00:28:25,160 --> 00:28:27,600
Speaker 1: just require a touch. But you also have to use

483
00:28:27,640 --> 00:28:30,720
Speaker 1: a conductive surface to touch the screen, So if you

484
00:28:30,760 --> 00:28:34,560
Speaker 1: were wearing like regular gloves, then it wouldn't work because

485
00:28:34,560 --> 00:28:38,280
Speaker 1: the gloves would insulate your fingers from the surface. Fun fact,

486
00:28:38,320 --> 00:28:40,680
Speaker 1: this is why a few years ago there were stories

487
00:28:40,680 --> 00:28:43,320
Speaker 1: about people in Japan using hot dogs to operate their

488
00:28:43,320 --> 00:28:45,840
Speaker 1: smartphones during the winter because it was too cold to

489
00:28:45,880 --> 00:28:48,920
Speaker 1: go without gloves, and hot dogs could stand in as

490
00:28:48,960 --> 00:28:53,680
Speaker 1: a fingertip because they too can conduct electricity anyway, Early

491
00:28:53,760 --> 00:28:57,680
Speaker 1: laptop touch pads were often resistive technologies, and you had

492
00:28:57,720 --> 00:28:59,600
Speaker 1: to use a little bit of pressure in order for

493
00:28:59,640 --> 00:29:03,040
Speaker 1: them to I remember having some early laptops with touch pads,

494
00:29:03,040 --> 00:29:04,920
Speaker 1: and the touch pad would give up the ghosts after

495
00:29:05,000 --> 00:29:08,400
Speaker 1: a few years just from heavy use. While the incorporation

496
00:29:08,440 --> 00:29:12,600
Speaker 1: of touch pads first came from a relatively obscure company, Olivetty,

497
00:29:12,680 --> 00:29:15,040
Speaker 1: but at least it was obscure here in the United States,

498
00:29:15,400 --> 00:29:17,920
Speaker 1: touch pads would find their way into the designs of

499
00:29:18,320 --> 00:29:21,960
Speaker 1: other laptop companies, including Apple, which would update its power

500
00:29:22,000 --> 00:29:25,000
Speaker 1: book lines with new models that replaced the track ball

501
00:29:25,040 --> 00:29:27,920
Speaker 1: with a touch pad, and it would become a fairly

502
00:29:27,960 --> 00:29:31,320
Speaker 1: standard component in laptop and notebook computers. Because this was

503
00:29:31,360 --> 00:29:34,680
Speaker 1: also the time we were seeing a very serious shift

504
00:29:34,800 --> 00:29:39,320
Speaker 1: away from text based operating systems like DOSS and moving

505
00:29:39,320 --> 00:29:44,400
Speaker 1: more to graphic user interfaces like Windows and mac os,

506
00:29:44,440 --> 00:29:47,600
Speaker 1: So you had to have something now. Not all laptops

507
00:29:47,600 --> 00:29:50,360
Speaker 1: around this time had disc drives, but those that did

508
00:29:50,480 --> 00:29:53,600
Speaker 1: typically relied on the three and a half inch disk drive.

509
00:29:54,040 --> 00:29:58,280
Speaker 1: It wasn't until when IBM, which at the time was

510
00:29:58,400 --> 00:30:02,680
Speaker 1: still making consumer computer released the think Pad seven seven

511
00:30:02,760 --> 00:30:05,840
Speaker 1: five C D that optical drives. In this case, a

512
00:30:05,960 --> 00:30:10,600
Speaker 1: CD drive or CD ROM drive would become standard, and

513
00:30:10,680 --> 00:30:14,800
Speaker 1: CD ROM disks represented a big jump in storage capability.

514
00:30:15,080 --> 00:30:18,200
Speaker 1: The three and a half inch disc of could hold

515
00:30:18,240 --> 00:30:21,520
Speaker 1: about twenty one megabytes of data. A refinement of a

516
00:30:21,600 --> 00:30:24,080
Speaker 1: few years later would boost them up to a hundred

517
00:30:24,080 --> 00:30:28,400
Speaker 1: twenty megabytes. The information was stored magnetically on the disc,

518
00:30:28,480 --> 00:30:31,080
Speaker 1: which is why you were supposed to keep floppy disks

519
00:30:31,120 --> 00:30:34,720
Speaker 1: away from powerful magnets, because those magnets could realign all

520
00:30:34,760 --> 00:30:38,520
Speaker 1: the magnetic particles that was on the film inside the

521
00:30:38,600 --> 00:30:41,520
Speaker 1: computer disc and thus corrupt all the data that was

522
00:30:41,560 --> 00:30:45,280
Speaker 1: stored on that disc. A CD ROM disc could hold

523
00:30:45,480 --> 00:30:48,440
Speaker 1: much more data, as much as six d forty megabytes.

524
00:30:48,480 --> 00:30:51,120
Speaker 1: It also is optical storage, not magnetic. You could bring

525
00:30:51,120 --> 00:30:54,040
Speaker 1: a powerful bangnet near a compact disc, it wouldn't affect anything,

526
00:30:54,560 --> 00:30:58,800
Speaker 1: because that's not how they store information. However, the think

527
00:30:58,840 --> 00:31:02,000
Speaker 1: Pad did not have a c deep burner, so you

528
00:31:02,040 --> 00:31:05,800
Speaker 1: weren't storing information on CDs. You could only read information

529
00:31:05,840 --> 00:31:08,920
Speaker 1: from CDs. That's where the ROM matters here. ROM stands

530
00:31:08,960 --> 00:31:12,280
Speaker 1: for read only memory. That means you can pull data

531
00:31:12,520 --> 00:31:15,400
Speaker 1: from the source as much as you like, but you

532
00:31:15,440 --> 00:31:18,360
Speaker 1: cannot change the data and you can't add to it.

533
00:31:18,920 --> 00:31:22,480
Speaker 1: A CD at this time was essentially an unchanging record,

534
00:31:22,840 --> 00:31:27,000
Speaker 1: so software developers can make more complex programs on CDs,

535
00:31:27,040 --> 00:31:28,920
Speaker 1: and that would remove the need for users to keep

536
00:31:28,920 --> 00:31:31,720
Speaker 1: track of five or six discs and then swapping out

537
00:31:31,720 --> 00:31:35,160
Speaker 1: the discs whenever the computers said so, which was nice.

538
00:31:35,440 --> 00:31:38,480
Speaker 1: You no longer have that hassle. IBM would introduce another

539
00:31:38,520 --> 00:31:43,560
Speaker 1: really interesting innovation in one that wouldn't become standard, but

540
00:31:43,640 --> 00:31:47,200
Speaker 1: it was really cool. It's a great idea. So it's

541
00:31:47,240 --> 00:31:51,080
Speaker 1: clear that one enormous challenge early on with portable computers

542
00:31:51,160 --> 00:31:54,000
Speaker 1: was miniaturizing stuff so that could all fit into a

543
00:31:54,040 --> 00:31:57,840
Speaker 1: small form factor and also so it wouldn't be too heavy.

544
00:31:58,040 --> 00:32:01,120
Speaker 1: And engineers did a great job working with various components.

545
00:32:01,160 --> 00:32:05,800
Speaker 1: They optimized designs that created crazy compact circuit boards that

546
00:32:05,880 --> 00:32:08,240
Speaker 1: allow for a notebook style laptop. I mean, if you

547
00:32:08,280 --> 00:32:10,160
Speaker 1: were to ever open up some of these laptops, you

548
00:32:10,160 --> 00:32:13,800
Speaker 1: would be amazed at how tightly packed they are. In fact,

549
00:32:13,840 --> 00:32:16,080
Speaker 1: remember when I said the term notebooks came out to

550
00:32:16,120 --> 00:32:20,640
Speaker 1: describe slimmer, smaller laptop computers. By the mid nineties we

551
00:32:20,680 --> 00:32:24,120
Speaker 1: had a new term. These were sub notebooks, so these

552
00:32:24,120 --> 00:32:28,760
Speaker 1: were even smallerer and slimmerer than those But there was

553
00:32:28,800 --> 00:32:31,400
Speaker 1: a trade off, and that was that the keyboards for

554
00:32:31,440 --> 00:32:34,800
Speaker 1: those devices tended to be more than a little cramped.

555
00:32:35,160 --> 00:32:36,480
Speaker 1: I'm sure a lot of you out there have worked

556
00:32:36,480 --> 00:32:39,680
Speaker 1: with laptop computers that had small keyboards, so it worked.

557
00:32:39,680 --> 00:32:43,200
Speaker 1: For example, I use a full sized USB keyboard that

558
00:32:43,240 --> 00:32:46,600
Speaker 1: I plug into my laptops docking station so I can

559
00:32:46,720 --> 00:32:49,320
Speaker 1: use that instead of the laptop's native keyboard because it

560
00:32:49,360 --> 00:32:52,640
Speaker 1: just gets too uncomfortable after a couple of hours of typing. Well,

561
00:32:53,440 --> 00:32:57,680
Speaker 1: IBM was looking at this problem and a brilliant designer

562
00:32:57,760 --> 00:33:01,400
Speaker 1: named John Kuritas came up with a solution, and supposedly

563
00:33:01,400 --> 00:33:03,280
Speaker 1: it occurred to him after he had been playing with

564
00:33:03,360 --> 00:33:07,320
Speaker 1: building blocks with his daughter. And IBM called the solution

565
00:33:07,360 --> 00:33:10,640
Speaker 1: the track right, but almost everybody else called it a

566
00:33:10,680 --> 00:33:14,520
Speaker 1: butterfly keyboard. It's a little tricky to describe an audio,

567
00:33:14,560 --> 00:33:17,240
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna do my best. So imagine you've got

568
00:33:17,280 --> 00:33:21,360
Speaker 1: a closed laptop. The screen is down and it's the

569
00:33:21,480 --> 00:33:25,520
Speaker 1: size of a decent compact laptop, and then you open

570
00:33:25,560 --> 00:33:28,760
Speaker 1: it up. You lift the latch and you lift the

571
00:33:28,800 --> 00:33:32,000
Speaker 1: screen up and as you do, so the you see

572
00:33:32,040 --> 00:33:35,520
Speaker 1: that the keyboard begins to shift into place. It's actually

573
00:33:35,600 --> 00:33:39,120
Speaker 1: two half keyboards and they're mounted on a pair of

574
00:33:39,240 --> 00:33:43,880
Speaker 1: sliding basses. So as the laptop opens, the keyboard separates

575
00:33:43,880 --> 00:33:46,280
Speaker 1: a bit, spreads apart, and then fits back together to

576
00:33:46,360 --> 00:33:49,840
Speaker 1: become a larger keyboard. It actually is large enough to

577
00:33:49,960 --> 00:33:53,920
Speaker 1: overlap on either side of the base of the laptop,

578
00:33:54,040 --> 00:33:57,520
Speaker 1: meaning the base is now wider than the screen is.

579
00:33:58,160 --> 00:34:01,840
Speaker 1: When you close the laptop, same sequence happens, but in reverse.

580
00:34:01,880 --> 00:34:06,480
Speaker 1: The keyboard platforms detach, they swivel a bit and fold

581
00:34:06,520 --> 00:34:10,000
Speaker 1: in together to conserve space, making it more compact. And

582
00:34:10,360 --> 00:34:12,799
Speaker 1: this is probably a little hard for you to imagine,

583
00:34:12,960 --> 00:34:15,680
Speaker 1: so I recommend that you guys do a search for

584
00:34:15,840 --> 00:34:21,160
Speaker 1: IBM Butterfly keyboard or the think Pad seven oh one C.

585
00:34:22,000 --> 00:34:24,800
Speaker 1: There are videos on YouTube that show it in action,

586
00:34:24,880 --> 00:34:26,799
Speaker 1: so you can actually see. In fact, there are some

587
00:34:26,880 --> 00:34:30,160
Speaker 1: that explain the mechanism that was used to activate this.

588
00:34:30,200 --> 00:34:33,320
Speaker 1: It was built into the hinge of the lid itself,

589
00:34:33,360 --> 00:34:37,120
Speaker 1: the display itself. The think Pad seven oh one C

590
00:34:37,360 --> 00:34:40,319
Speaker 1: would be the only laptop to feature the track right,

591
00:34:40,520 --> 00:34:42,359
Speaker 1: and to purchase one back in the day would set

592
00:34:42,400 --> 00:34:46,719
Speaker 1: you back a cool three thousand, seven hundred dollars back

593
00:34:47,880 --> 00:34:51,200
Speaker 1: that would be about the same as spending six hundred

594
00:34:51,200 --> 00:34:54,239
Speaker 1: bucks on it today. Okay, so maybe I do see

595
00:34:54,280 --> 00:34:56,080
Speaker 1: why it didn't catch on, although I should add the

596
00:34:56,160 --> 00:34:58,360
Speaker 1: keyboard was not the only thing contributing to that price

597
00:34:58,400 --> 00:35:01,200
Speaker 1: tag on this one. The design, however, did get a

598
00:35:01,200 --> 00:35:04,440
Speaker 1: lot of critical acclaim including more than twenty Design awards,

599
00:35:04,800 --> 00:35:07,200
Speaker 1: even though it wouldn't find its way into future laptops,

600
00:35:07,200 --> 00:35:09,440
Speaker 1: which is kind of a shame because it is really nifty,

601
00:35:09,520 --> 00:35:12,239
Speaker 1: especially if you like stuff like transformers, because that's what

602
00:35:12,280 --> 00:35:15,800
Speaker 1: it reminds me of. Anyway, by this time, the basic

603
00:35:15,840 --> 00:35:19,120
Speaker 1: components of your standard laptop were mostly in place. Nearly

604
00:35:19,160 --> 00:35:22,319
Speaker 1: all were clamshell design, nearly all had some sort of

605
00:35:22,360 --> 00:35:26,120
Speaker 1: mouse replacement like a touchpad or track pad, and nearly

606
00:35:26,160 --> 00:35:28,840
Speaker 1: all had some sort of additional drive, whether it was

607
00:35:28,840 --> 00:35:31,799
Speaker 1: a floppy disk drive or a CD ROM drive. And

608
00:35:31,800 --> 00:35:34,040
Speaker 1: when we come back, I'll talk about some other cool

609
00:35:34,120 --> 00:35:37,560
Speaker 1: innovations and first in laptop history, but first let's take

610
00:35:37,960 --> 00:35:48,719
Speaker 1: another quick break. Something that happened in the nineteen nineties

611
00:35:48,960 --> 00:35:51,360
Speaker 1: that would go on to be a major influence in

612
00:35:51,480 --> 00:35:55,200
Speaker 1: laptop design was the creation of the Universal Serial Bus

613
00:35:55,440 --> 00:36:00,160
Speaker 1: or USB. Today, these ports are everywhere and they allow

614
00:36:00,239 --> 00:36:02,719
Speaker 1: us to plug in all sorts of peripherroles or devices

615
00:36:02,800 --> 00:36:06,000
Speaker 1: into a computer or hub. They've also advanced the standard

616
00:36:06,080 --> 00:36:08,800
Speaker 1: quite a bit, so now we've got US B C

617
00:36:09,160 --> 00:36:12,080
Speaker 1: and all this other stuff. But you get the point.

618
00:36:12,239 --> 00:36:13,800
Speaker 1: The important point I was trying to make here is

619
00:36:13,840 --> 00:36:16,160
Speaker 1: that they really eliminate the need for a lot of

620
00:36:16,200 --> 00:36:19,640
Speaker 1: specialized ports that computers otherwise had to have back in

621
00:36:19,680 --> 00:36:22,600
Speaker 1: the day. You know, if you bought a computer in

622
00:36:22,640 --> 00:36:26,800
Speaker 1: the nineties, then you had all these different specialized ports,

623
00:36:26,840 --> 00:36:29,680
Speaker 1: like you had a port just for a mouse to

624
00:36:29,680 --> 00:36:32,520
Speaker 1: plug in, one for the keyboard, one for a printer.

625
00:36:33,000 --> 00:36:35,400
Speaker 1: You might have one for a joystick or game pad,

626
00:36:36,280 --> 00:36:38,920
Speaker 1: and these started to add up, right, You had all

627
00:36:38,920 --> 00:36:42,319
Speaker 1: these different specialized ports. That meant that a computer had

628
00:36:42,360 --> 00:36:45,560
Speaker 1: to have enough space for each of those. Uh, the

629
00:36:45,719 --> 00:36:49,160
Speaker 1: engineers had to build in the actual circuit boards for

630
00:36:49,200 --> 00:36:52,960
Speaker 1: each of those. The the the interfaces that connected the

631
00:36:53,040 --> 00:36:57,960
Speaker 1: port with the computer motherboard itself. So the invention of

632
00:36:58,000 --> 00:37:02,719
Speaker 1: the USB meant that you have a universal connector that

633
00:37:02,880 --> 00:37:06,120
Speaker 1: would be compatible with all sorts of different devices. So

634
00:37:06,360 --> 00:37:11,440
Speaker 1: manufacturers would make USB capable or USB compatible printers for example,

635
00:37:11,480 --> 00:37:13,759
Speaker 1: so you wouldn't need a printer cable. You just hook

636
00:37:13,880 --> 00:37:17,760
Speaker 1: up a USB cable between the printer and the laptop,

637
00:37:17,920 --> 00:37:21,320
Speaker 1: or you would use a USB mouse or USB keyboard,

638
00:37:21,840 --> 00:37:23,879
Speaker 1: and you no longer had to worry about all these

639
00:37:23,880 --> 00:37:29,440
Speaker 1: specialized connectors. And it really simplified the design of computers

640
00:37:29,440 --> 00:37:32,560
Speaker 1: in general and laptops in particular. That in turn would

641
00:37:32,560 --> 00:37:35,920
Speaker 1: also bring prices down. I mean, if you can streamline design,

642
00:37:36,480 --> 00:37:38,480
Speaker 1: then you cut out a lot of the stuff that

643
00:37:38,560 --> 00:37:42,080
Speaker 1: adds cost to the end product. So that was a

644
00:37:42,120 --> 00:37:45,600
Speaker 1: big deal. Even though it wasn't directly connected to laptops,

645
00:37:45,920 --> 00:37:48,840
Speaker 1: the development of USB would have an enormous impact on

646
00:37:48,960 --> 00:37:52,560
Speaker 1: laptop development moving forward. Beginning in the early two thousands,

647
00:37:52,640 --> 00:37:55,399
Speaker 1: around two thousand three or so, companies began to offer

648
00:37:55,480 --> 00:37:58,960
Speaker 1: laptop computers with DVD drives. Now, just as the CD

649
00:37:59,160 --> 00:38:03,000
Speaker 1: ROM drive had volutionized computing about a decade earlier, so

650
00:38:03,160 --> 00:38:06,799
Speaker 1: too with DVD drives, not only could you PLoP a

651
00:38:06,920 --> 00:38:10,319
Speaker 1: DVD film into your laptop and watch movies on the go,

652
00:38:10,680 --> 00:38:13,719
Speaker 1: which was a pretty darn novel idea back in the day,

653
00:38:13,840 --> 00:38:17,920
Speaker 1: you could also have software on DVDs, software for really

654
00:38:17,960 --> 00:38:20,919
Speaker 1: big programs because while a c D could hold around

655
00:38:20,920 --> 00:38:24,239
Speaker 1: six d forty megabytes of data, a DVD up the

656
00:38:24,280 --> 00:38:28,879
Speaker 1: anti to four point seven gigabytes of information or more.

657
00:38:29,160 --> 00:38:32,360
Speaker 1: If you used multi layer encoding and used both sides

658
00:38:32,400 --> 00:38:35,360
Speaker 1: of a disc, you could have up to seventeen gigabytes

659
00:38:35,400 --> 00:38:38,320
Speaker 1: on a single DVD. Not that a lot of people

660
00:38:38,480 --> 00:38:42,320
Speaker 1: did that, but it was a possibility. Around that same time,

661
00:38:43,040 --> 00:38:47,839
Speaker 1: HP introduced the Compact TC one thousand and this one

662
00:38:48,040 --> 00:38:51,400
Speaker 1: is a bit of a hybrid computer. It had a

663
00:38:51,480 --> 00:38:54,799
Speaker 1: detachable keyboard, so when you had the keyboard and the

664
00:38:54,840 --> 00:38:59,120
Speaker 1: display joined together, you essentially had a notebook style laptop

665
00:38:59,280 --> 00:39:03,160
Speaker 1: clamshell the sign but you could also separate the display

666
00:39:03,360 --> 00:39:07,719
Speaker 1: from the keyboard, which was pretty novel back in two

667
00:39:07,719 --> 00:39:10,960
Speaker 1: thousand three, and then you would have a tablet PC.

668
00:39:11,800 --> 00:39:14,480
Speaker 1: There was also an optional docking station you could purchase

669
00:39:14,600 --> 00:39:17,400
Speaker 1: and that would essentially turn this into a desktop, though

670
00:39:17,960 --> 00:39:20,600
Speaker 1: it was a desktop that was severely lacking in processing

671
00:39:20,640 --> 00:39:23,960
Speaker 1: power and other capabilities compared to other desktops around that

672
00:39:24,040 --> 00:39:27,200
Speaker 1: same time. However, it was a real innovation and when

673
00:39:27,200 --> 00:39:29,600
Speaker 1: we would see used a few times further down the

674
00:39:29,680 --> 00:39:33,319
Speaker 1: road as laptops would try to masquerade as tablets, or

675
00:39:33,480 --> 00:39:37,600
Speaker 1: vice versa. So it was kind of the beginning of

676
00:39:37,760 --> 00:39:40,719
Speaker 1: a trend in design, but it was a trend that

677
00:39:40,760 --> 00:39:43,719
Speaker 1: was very slow to pick up because also, this is

678
00:39:43,719 --> 00:39:47,400
Speaker 1: two thousand three, This is well before the iPad and

679
00:39:47,440 --> 00:39:52,040
Speaker 1: well before things like tablet computers had a widespread appeal.

680
00:39:52,280 --> 00:39:58,120
Speaker 1: There were very niche jobs, like especially in the medical industry,

681
00:39:58,160 --> 00:40:00,799
Speaker 1: that really depended upon tablet piece seas, but you know,

682
00:40:00,840 --> 00:40:03,279
Speaker 1: your average person had no use for them before the

683
00:40:03,320 --> 00:40:06,759
Speaker 1: iPad came around. Still, it was pretty cool to see

684
00:40:06,760 --> 00:40:09,240
Speaker 1: that as early as two thousand three there were companies

685
00:40:09,280 --> 00:40:11,839
Speaker 1: that were working on that sort of design. In two

686
00:40:11,880 --> 00:40:15,520
Speaker 1: thousand six, Apple made a switch from the power Book laptops,

687
00:40:15,520 --> 00:40:18,160
Speaker 1: which had been using G four processors for the last

688
00:40:18,160 --> 00:40:21,560
Speaker 1: several generations of the power Book, and then introduced a

689
00:40:21,600 --> 00:40:24,759
Speaker 1: new line of laptops called the MacBook. Now by two

690
00:40:24,760 --> 00:40:27,040
Speaker 1: thousand six, Steve Jobs have been back with the company

691
00:40:27,040 --> 00:40:29,960
Speaker 1: for essentially a decade, so he was making some really

692
00:40:29,960 --> 00:40:33,239
Speaker 1: big moves. Around this time, the iPod had already really

693
00:40:33,360 --> 00:40:36,520
Speaker 1: established itself as a success, and the company was on

694
00:40:36,560 --> 00:40:39,920
Speaker 1: the verge of releasing the iPhone the following year. So

695
00:40:40,320 --> 00:40:46,680
Speaker 1: these MacBooks had Intel microprocessors in them. Not G four processors.

696
00:40:46,840 --> 00:40:50,080
Speaker 1: They also featured webcams, and as far as I can tell,

697
00:40:50,120 --> 00:40:53,200
Speaker 1: there's some of the earliest laptop computers that actually incorporated

698
00:40:53,200 --> 00:40:56,920
Speaker 1: a webcam into the design, into the bezel of the display.

699
00:40:57,040 --> 00:40:59,760
Speaker 1: The company offered up a range of computers in different

700
00:40:59,760 --> 00:41:03,560
Speaker 1: side and capabilities and price tags. So if you wanted

701
00:41:03,560 --> 00:41:08,920
Speaker 1: a basic MacBook, the no frills, entry level MacBook that

702
00:41:09,000 --> 00:41:12,640
Speaker 1: costs a thousand dollars really a thousand ninety nine dollars.

703
00:41:13,080 --> 00:41:14,680
Speaker 1: But if you wanted the top of the line, the

704
00:41:14,760 --> 00:41:18,520
Speaker 1: seventeen inch MacBook Pro when it first launched, that would

705
00:41:18,520 --> 00:41:24,919
Speaker 1: be two thousand seven premium price tags from Apple Products. Now,

706
00:41:24,920 --> 00:41:27,760
Speaker 1: over time, Apple would phase out the seventeen inch model

707
00:41:27,760 --> 00:41:30,400
Speaker 1: of the MacBook, releasing the last one in two thousand twelve,

708
00:41:30,880 --> 00:41:33,240
Speaker 1: and the company was really packing more power and smaller

709
00:41:33,280 --> 00:41:36,480
Speaker 1: form factors, and the development of the retina display technology

710
00:41:36,480 --> 00:41:39,360
Speaker 1: would change things up a lot too, so they ultimately

711
00:41:39,400 --> 00:41:41,480
Speaker 1: abandoned that and that was when they were switching to

712
00:41:41,960 --> 00:41:45,320
Speaker 1: the MacBook Air strategy. I'll talk about that more in

713
00:41:45,440 --> 00:41:48,560
Speaker 1: just a second, But in two thousand seven, we would

714
00:41:48,560 --> 00:41:51,200
Speaker 1: see a new type of innovation in the laptop space,

715
00:41:51,239 --> 00:41:53,120
Speaker 1: and this was the same year that Apple put out

716
00:41:53,160 --> 00:41:56,960
Speaker 1: the iPhone and launched a tremendous trend in consumer smartphones.

717
00:41:58,040 --> 00:41:59,879
Speaker 1: Now there was another trend that was starting to take

718
00:42:00,120 --> 00:42:02,680
Speaker 1: with laptop computers, but this one didn't have nearly as

719
00:42:02,760 --> 00:42:05,360
Speaker 1: much success as the smartphone industry, and that would be

720
00:42:05,400 --> 00:42:09,400
Speaker 1: the emergence of the netbook. So yeah, we're getting back

721
00:42:09,440 --> 00:42:13,000
Speaker 1: to naming conventions. We had laptops, we had notebooks, we

722
00:42:13,040 --> 00:42:16,520
Speaker 1: had sub notebooks, we had tablets, we had hybrids. Now

723
00:42:16,600 --> 00:42:20,439
Speaker 1: we have netbooks. So what are those? Well, I should

724
00:42:20,600 --> 00:42:22,560
Speaker 1: use the past tense for these, because no one really

725
00:42:22,600 --> 00:42:26,400
Speaker 1: talks about netbooks anymore. But they're even smaller devices than

726
00:42:26,520 --> 00:42:31,760
Speaker 1: sub notebooks. They're somewhere between smartphone and sub notebook. They

727
00:42:31,800 --> 00:42:35,080
Speaker 1: typically lack stuff like optical drives, so you don't have

728
00:42:35,160 --> 00:42:38,320
Speaker 1: like a CD driver, DV drive at all. There's in

729
00:42:38,400 --> 00:42:40,920
Speaker 1: fact no drives all. This helps cut down on bulk

730
00:42:40,960 --> 00:42:44,080
Speaker 1: and cost. This is not something that's unusual these days.

731
00:42:44,080 --> 00:42:46,920
Speaker 1: A lot of laptops don't have any kind of optical

732
00:42:47,040 --> 00:42:49,359
Speaker 1: drive in them, but they also tend to have much

733
00:42:49,440 --> 00:42:52,600
Speaker 1: less powerful processors than standard laptops. They often rely on

734
00:42:52,640 --> 00:42:56,680
Speaker 1: the exact same type of microprocessors that handheld devices use

735
00:42:56,760 --> 00:42:59,520
Speaker 1: like smartphones, and they offload a lot of the heavy

736
00:42:59,560 --> 00:43:03,120
Speaker 1: lifting to the cloud. You're meant to use these devices

737
00:43:03,160 --> 00:43:07,200
Speaker 1: to access web and net based services rather than running

738
00:43:07,239 --> 00:43:12,040
Speaker 1: programs natively on the machine. Thus you get netbooks in

739
00:43:12,080 --> 00:43:14,640
Speaker 1: a way. This was a move back to the old

740
00:43:14,719 --> 00:43:17,880
Speaker 1: days of dumb terminals and mainframes. So with that model,

741
00:43:18,040 --> 00:43:21,239
Speaker 1: you had a centralized computer the main frame. Like if

742
00:43:21,239 --> 00:43:23,960
Speaker 1: you might work for a big company financial company and

743
00:43:23,960 --> 00:43:26,840
Speaker 1: they have a mainframe computer and you would interface with

744
00:43:26,880 --> 00:43:30,480
Speaker 1: that by connecting through a dumb terminal. A dumb terminal

745
00:43:30,520 --> 00:43:35,000
Speaker 1: is essentially just an input and output device. Commonly you

746
00:43:35,000 --> 00:43:38,400
Speaker 1: would be using keyboards and displays, and these devices have

747
00:43:38,480 --> 00:43:40,800
Speaker 1: no computing power of their own. They are not computers.

748
00:43:40,800 --> 00:43:43,280
Speaker 1: It's just a way for you to access the main frame.

749
00:43:43,520 --> 00:43:45,320
Speaker 1: And you can actually have a lot of different people

750
00:43:45,520 --> 00:43:48,400
Speaker 1: with a lot of different dumb terminals, all accessing the

751
00:43:48,440 --> 00:43:51,439
Speaker 1: main frame around the same time. Though you would often

752
00:43:51,480 --> 00:43:54,240
Speaker 1: have a central computer using a system called time sharing,

753
00:43:54,280 --> 00:43:56,360
Speaker 1: but that's a matter for a different episode, all right,

754
00:43:56,400 --> 00:43:59,719
Speaker 1: So flash forward, we moved through an era where computing

755
00:44:00,000 --> 00:44:03,640
Speaker 1: oponents get maturized, they get less expensive. This allows for

756
00:44:03,680 --> 00:44:06,040
Speaker 1: the rise of the personal computer. Where people have their

757
00:44:06,040 --> 00:44:09,480
Speaker 1: own computational machine at their disposal, so all the computing

758
00:44:09,560 --> 00:44:12,640
Speaker 1: happens at the computer that the user is sitting at.

759
00:44:12,640 --> 00:44:14,760
Speaker 1: There not at a dumb terminal anymore. They are actually

760
00:44:14,800 --> 00:44:17,680
Speaker 1: at a computer. Then we get to the point where

761
00:44:17,920 --> 00:44:22,440
Speaker 1: the Internet emerges from being this obscure project that only

762
00:44:22,520 --> 00:44:27,520
Speaker 1: people in academia, the military, and a few research facilities

763
00:44:27,520 --> 00:44:29,839
Speaker 1: are aware of, and then no one else has heard

764
00:44:29,840 --> 00:44:32,279
Speaker 1: about it, and then it becomes a public utility, or

765
00:44:32,280 --> 00:44:35,320
Speaker 1: at least it should be one. And now the Internet,

766
00:44:35,440 --> 00:44:39,400
Speaker 1: or rather servers that are on the Internet, can fulfill

767
00:44:39,440 --> 00:44:43,640
Speaker 1: a function similar to those mainframes. It's not centralized the

768
00:44:43,640 --> 00:44:46,080
Speaker 1: way a mainframe is. But once again, the end user

769
00:44:46,200 --> 00:44:50,400
Speaker 1: doesn't need a very powerful machine. They can access servers

770
00:44:50,400 --> 00:44:52,960
Speaker 1: that's doing doing all the heavy lifting on the server end,

771
00:44:53,400 --> 00:44:58,200
Speaker 1: sending the data through some web based or net based interface,

772
00:44:58,600 --> 00:45:01,840
Speaker 1: and then you're getting the result on your device. It

773
00:45:01,960 --> 00:45:05,400
Speaker 1: becomes kind of a conduit to these more powerful computers,

774
00:45:05,400 --> 00:45:08,239
Speaker 1: so your computer doesn't have to be as strong, and

775
00:45:08,320 --> 00:45:12,560
Speaker 1: that means you can enjoy really interesting content, especially as

776
00:45:12,640 --> 00:45:15,480
Speaker 1: long as your your machine has the capability of doing that. Right,

777
00:45:15,480 --> 00:45:17,800
Speaker 1: it still has to be able to display good graphics.

778
00:45:17,800 --> 00:45:20,240
Speaker 1: It still has to be able to play good sound

779
00:45:20,520 --> 00:45:22,840
Speaker 1: so that you can have those rich Internet experiences that

780
00:45:22,880 --> 00:45:26,839
Speaker 1: we've all come to expect, you know, like streaming Tiger King. Now,

781
00:45:26,880 --> 00:45:28,480
Speaker 1: I know that's the second time I've made a Tiger

782
00:45:28,560 --> 00:45:31,319
Speaker 1: King reference, and I should also add that I haven't

783
00:45:31,320 --> 00:45:34,680
Speaker 1: actually watched Tiger King. I've just absorbed all my knowledge

784
00:45:34,719 --> 00:45:36,680
Speaker 1: of it from social media, because that seems to be

785
00:45:37,280 --> 00:45:39,960
Speaker 1: one of two things everyone's talking about, and the other

786
00:45:40,040 --> 00:45:45,080
Speaker 1: one is COVID nineteen, so I prefer referencing Tiger King

787
00:45:45,640 --> 00:45:48,360
Speaker 1: at the time being. Anyway, what this would mean to

788
00:45:48,440 --> 00:45:51,960
Speaker 1: the end consumers is that netbooks would be these super

789
00:45:52,080 --> 00:45:55,520
Speaker 1: lightweight devices and they could be really cheap compared to

790
00:45:55,560 --> 00:45:59,880
Speaker 1: other laptops. The tradeoff was they were also underpowered compared

791
00:45:59,880 --> 00:46:02,239
Speaker 1: to laptops, and they could only run a subset of

792
00:46:02,280 --> 00:46:06,000
Speaker 1: the types of software that other computers could run. Netbooks

793
00:46:06,000 --> 00:46:09,040
Speaker 1: became a big category over the next few years, and

794
00:46:09,080 --> 00:46:12,280
Speaker 1: companies rushed to build their own versions of these lightweight,

795
00:46:12,520 --> 00:46:16,560
Speaker 1: lightly powered machines. The a sous e PC seven oh

796
00:46:16,600 --> 00:46:19,400
Speaker 1: one E, by the way, is three es, so I

797
00:46:19,400 --> 00:46:23,279
Speaker 1: guess it's really e PC one would be a really

798
00:46:23,320 --> 00:46:25,160
Speaker 1: early example of this. In fact, a lot of people

799
00:46:25,200 --> 00:46:28,920
Speaker 1: call the seven oh one the first netbook, but if

800
00:46:28,920 --> 00:46:31,200
Speaker 1: I'm being honest with you, guys, the timelines for these

801
00:46:31,200 --> 00:46:35,399
Speaker 1: things get really tough to untangle. Anyway, the seven oh

802
00:46:35,440 --> 00:46:38,839
Speaker 1: one way just two pounds or point nine two ks,

803
00:46:38,880 --> 00:46:40,960
Speaker 1: so it was feather light compared to some of the

804
00:46:40,960 --> 00:46:45,120
Speaker 1: other laptops I've talked about, and it also cost three

805
00:46:45,480 --> 00:46:48,719
Speaker 1: when it launched, landing it solidly in the budget category

806
00:46:48,800 --> 00:46:52,440
Speaker 1: for portable computers. Netbooks would tend to be so small

807
00:46:52,680 --> 00:46:55,480
Speaker 1: that users would run up against some pretty tough obstacles,

808
00:46:55,520 --> 00:47:00,400
Speaker 1: including those keyboards. Sub notebook keyboards are hard to tie upon.

809
00:47:00,600 --> 00:47:05,200
Speaker 1: Netbook keyboards are painful for me. They're even more cramped

810
00:47:05,239 --> 00:47:09,200
Speaker 1: than notebook or sub notebook styles, and that is a downside,

811
00:47:09,200 --> 00:47:12,040
Speaker 1: But I don't think that would ultimately be what led

812
00:47:12,080 --> 00:47:16,399
Speaker 1: companies to abandon the netbook form factor. Most companies did

813
00:47:16,400 --> 00:47:19,120
Speaker 1: that around the year two thousand eleven. I think the

814
00:47:19,160 --> 00:47:21,359
Speaker 1: real reason most companies got all the game comes down

815
00:47:21,440 --> 00:47:26,200
Speaker 1: to cash money, y'all. See budget netbooks fill a consumer need,

816
00:47:26,680 --> 00:47:30,000
Speaker 1: but they're not great for profit margins. The cost of

817
00:47:30,080 --> 00:47:32,880
Speaker 1: making a netbook versus the amount you get for selling

818
00:47:32,880 --> 00:47:36,120
Speaker 1: the netbook is narrow enough that it was a problem

819
00:47:36,160 --> 00:47:38,480
Speaker 1: for a lot of companies. I mean, if you're a company,

820
00:47:38,560 --> 00:47:41,440
Speaker 1: you have a limited number of resources at your disposal,

821
00:47:41,800 --> 00:47:45,279
Speaker 1: why would you dedicate manufacturing and design resources for a

822
00:47:45,280 --> 00:47:48,719
Speaker 1: product that might not even make its money back. Like

823
00:47:48,760 --> 00:47:51,000
Speaker 1: the amount that you're pouring in you're not getting back

824
00:47:51,040 --> 00:47:54,600
Speaker 1: in your return on investment. You could use that same

825
00:47:54,640 --> 00:47:57,160
Speaker 1: amount of time and effort designing other stuff that has

826
00:47:57,200 --> 00:48:01,640
Speaker 1: a better return. And so, for many reasons, but mostly money,

827
00:48:01,800 --> 00:48:04,640
Speaker 1: companies started to back off of making net books. Around

828
00:48:04,640 --> 00:48:09,160
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven, we did see slightly larger laptop computers

829
00:48:09,160 --> 00:48:13,040
Speaker 1: that otherwise followed the netbook philosophy. However, they still had

830
00:48:13,040 --> 00:48:16,239
Speaker 1: a focus on web and net based services, but they

831
00:48:16,280 --> 00:48:20,320
Speaker 1: also would include slightly higher end features like better displays,

832
00:48:20,480 --> 00:48:23,400
Speaker 1: which in turn would mean the price tags would be higher.

833
00:48:24,040 --> 00:48:27,240
Speaker 1: And that's sort of where we've seen the budget market settle.

834
00:48:27,760 --> 00:48:31,359
Speaker 1: They're bigger than netbooks, typically, they're not necessarily as big

835
00:48:31,400 --> 00:48:35,120
Speaker 1: as full laptops. They're somewhere in that sub notebook range.

836
00:48:35,160 --> 00:48:38,480
Speaker 1: Perhaps there are other examples of laptops that we could

837
00:48:38,480 --> 00:48:42,440
Speaker 1: talk about, like MacBook Air Apples, extremely thin, light laptop

838
00:48:42,520 --> 00:48:45,640
Speaker 1: that essentially replaced the older MacBook line. Or we can

839
00:48:45,680 --> 00:48:48,319
Speaker 1: talk about the Chrome Book, which are laptops that are

840
00:48:48,400 --> 00:48:52,880
Speaker 1: running Google's Chrome operating system. They rely almost exclusively on

841
00:48:52,960 --> 00:48:57,640
Speaker 1: web based services. There's Lenovo's Yoga Book C nine thirty.

842
00:48:57,760 --> 00:49:00,839
Speaker 1: That's a laptop that replaces the physical keyboard with a

843
00:49:00,920 --> 00:49:04,160
Speaker 1: second touch screen that's powered by e Ink, So you

844
00:49:04,160 --> 00:49:07,400
Speaker 1: will have an e Ink touch screen keyboard. You're typing

845
00:49:07,440 --> 00:49:10,440
Speaker 1: on a screen rather than on physical keys. And I'm

846
00:49:10,480 --> 00:49:12,560
Speaker 1: not gonna lie. I actually really dig the design of

847
00:49:12,560 --> 00:49:14,879
Speaker 1: the Yoga Book. I don't own one, and I don't

848
00:49:14,880 --> 00:49:16,880
Speaker 1: know how comfortable it would be to use, but I

849
00:49:16,920 --> 00:49:21,080
Speaker 1: think it's a really nifty look looking device. Um Or

850
00:49:21,200 --> 00:49:23,040
Speaker 1: we could go back to two thousand eleven, you can

851
00:49:23,080 --> 00:49:26,760
Speaker 1: talk about the Razor Blade gaming laptop, which the company

852
00:49:26,880 --> 00:49:30,880
Speaker 1: Razor referred to as the world's first true gaming laptop. Now,

853
00:49:30,880 --> 00:49:33,400
Speaker 1: whether you agree with Razor or not, it is true

854
00:49:33,520 --> 00:49:36,279
Speaker 1: that since then we've seen more companies build laptops with

855
00:49:36,320 --> 00:49:40,320
Speaker 1: the intended purpose of serving as a gaming rig. And again,

856
00:49:40,360 --> 00:49:42,719
Speaker 1: the computer I used to type up all my notes

857
00:49:42,760 --> 00:49:45,080
Speaker 1: for this episode is one of those. Is that alien

858
00:49:45,120 --> 00:49:48,040
Speaker 1: Ware seventeen are four laptop and I do love it,

859
00:49:48,760 --> 00:49:51,040
Speaker 1: but I would never carry it around with me because

860
00:49:51,080 --> 00:49:53,680
Speaker 1: it weighs like ten pounds and it's about the size

861
00:49:53,680 --> 00:49:57,120
Speaker 1: of a coffee table. Okay, it's it's not really that big,

862
00:49:57,160 --> 00:49:59,080
Speaker 1: but it is large enough that I actually don't have

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00:49:59,120 --> 00:50:02,239
Speaker 1: a computer bag big enough to fit this thing in it.

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00:50:02,719 --> 00:50:06,040
Speaker 1: But I still love this computer, don't get me wrong. Now,

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00:50:06,320 --> 00:50:09,480
Speaker 1: I'm sure we'll continue to see lots of innovations in

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00:50:09,520 --> 00:50:12,960
Speaker 1: the laptop space, whether it's incorporating eye tracking technology and

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00:50:13,000 --> 00:50:15,360
Speaker 1: webcams to give you the ability to control your computer

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00:50:15,480 --> 00:50:18,319
Speaker 1: just by moving your eyes. Lots of computers have that,

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00:50:18,400 --> 00:50:21,840
Speaker 1: Mine has that, or computers that have their own voice

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00:50:21,840 --> 00:50:25,719
Speaker 1: activated assistance, two more purpose built machines that do a

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00:50:25,800 --> 00:50:29,000
Speaker 1: subset of things incredibly well. You know, we're watching as

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00:50:29,000 --> 00:50:32,600
Speaker 1: companies are working to differentiate their products from all of

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00:50:32,640 --> 00:50:35,040
Speaker 1: the competition, and as you can imagine, that gets pretty

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00:50:35,040 --> 00:50:37,480
Speaker 1: tough because you can only say, you know, this is

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00:50:37,520 --> 00:50:41,239
Speaker 1: like the old one, but faster, because people will start

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00:50:41,239 --> 00:50:43,160
Speaker 1: to lose interest. So I'm sure we're going to see

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00:50:43,200 --> 00:50:48,440
Speaker 1: more kind of innovative, funky, perhaps even outlandish design choices,

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00:50:48,480 --> 00:50:50,439
Speaker 1: some of which will succeed and some of which will

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00:50:51,280 --> 00:50:54,040
Speaker 1: never see again. My hope is that the track right

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00:50:54,080 --> 00:50:55,759
Speaker 1: will come back in some way because that was just

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00:50:55,760 --> 00:50:58,719
Speaker 1: such a cool design and it's a shame that was

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00:50:58,760 --> 00:51:01,680
Speaker 1: only ever used on one computer or But that wraps

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00:51:01,760 --> 00:51:05,759
Speaker 1: up our history of laptop computers. We will move on

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00:51:05,800 --> 00:51:08,080
Speaker 1: to a different topic for our next episode, but if

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00:51:08,160 --> 00:51:10,960
Speaker 1: you guys have suggestions for future tech Stuff episodes, reach

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00:51:11,000 --> 00:51:13,800
Speaker 1: out to me on Twitter or Facebook. The handle for

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00:51:13,920 --> 00:51:17,200
Speaker 1: both is text Stuff hs W and I'll talk to

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00:51:17,200 --> 00:51:25,359
Speaker 1: you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart

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00:51:25,440 --> 00:51:29,200
Speaker 1: Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit

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00:51:29,200 --> 00:51:32,319
Speaker 1: the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

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00:51:32,360 --> 00:51:33,720
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.