************************************************************** * * * CYBERSPACE * * A biweekly column on net culture appearing * * in the Toronto Sunday Sun * * * * Copyright 1999 Karl Mamer * * Free for online distribution * * All Rights Reserved * * Direct comments and questions to: * * * * * ************************************************************** iThoughts Last week Apple rolled out the iBook, the long awaited follow on to the computer company's oddly successful iMac offering. Newspapers on July 22 ran a picture of a grinning Steve Jobs, Apple's once and future saviour, holding his progeny which looked like a toilet seat to pretty much everybody I showed the picture to. Steve Jobs is such a super salesman I suppose he can convince the world that a laptop shaped like a bathroom fixture is innovative. In the early days of Apple, employees claimed Jobs projected a "reality distortion field". Anything Jobs said made instant, perfect sense. "Drink poison Kool-Aid? Yeah. Yeah. No problem!" Jobs with all his Eastern philosophy spouting and fashionable dress (by Silicon valley standards at least) is in some way responsible for both the survival of Apple and its limited penetration into the hallowed halls of true computer geekdom. Apple's computers have always had a funky appeal to the crowd that's hip enough to know you don't wear socks with Birkenstocks but smart enough to know you need to use computers to make an income. A niche market clearly. Unfortunately, you have to convince techies who wear navy dress socks with Birkenstocks that the machine is worthy enough to write software for. Apple has always had less success with that crowd. Techies tend to recoil from hipsters. When your back is turned they'll compare your computer to a toilet seat. Sweet revenge for all the indignities suffered in high school, I suppose. iBook: The first chapter Before the iBook, Apple's first really successful laptop computer was the Powerbook. The name "Powerbook" is an obscure nod to the work of Alan Kay. Kay is yet another one of those computer greats who's place in computer history has been over shadowed by the likes of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. For all intents and purposes Kay invented the laptop and the future. Kay worked at Xerox's fabled Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in the '70s, when computers were still the size of a couple refrigerators. At PARC, smart people were paid to develop revolutionary ideas. Xerox made a habit of ignoring these ideas (that's another column). Kay conceived of a notebook-sized computer called the Dynabook (dyna...power...Powerbook). Kay's idea was to give every school child in America a Dynabook. While the notion sounds foolish, giving cool new hardware to a small child instead of the commonly accepted practice of giving it to the loud, idiot vice president, Kay's attempt to develop a computer for children gave rise to not only the laptop computer but nearly everything we use today in the world of computers. The technology to actually build a notebook-sized computer did not exist in the '70s so Kay was forced to investigate the human-factor side of what was then considered a radical notion: a personal computer. Kay determined you should program the computer. The computer should not program you. One of the more interesting things Kay did was build a mock up of his Dynabook. He filled it with lead shot. He would carry the mock up around and after a time, he would add more lead shot. Kay wanted to discover how heavy a computer could get before you didn't want to lug it around anymore. He concluded 2 lbs was the maximum. In Kay's attempt to develop a computer that wouldn't program children, he dispensed with the notion of an operating system requiring arcane commands. He invented the graphical user interface. Kay eventually took his ideas to Apple and helped them create the Macintosh. Naturally, children with their little clumsy hands would find QWERTY keyboards both difficult to use and bewildering. A good way of giving kids immediate, robust hands-on experience was with a little device called a mouse. You can read a good biography of Kay at ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/GASCH.KAY.HTML.