The thrill of an ultra-thin laptop, cold as aluminum and with a super-defined screen that lasts for a whole day and night or so. Who would have thought that this would be the way of the great innovation of the early nineties, that is the invention of the truly portable computer, the tool that defined an entire class of workers, the so-called digital nomads, and which then became the weapon of millions of students and ordinary people and gradually replaced in many homes the desktop computer?
Steve Jobs was one of the first technology greats to understand the potential of the laptop, focusing heavily on a product that giants like Dell and HP saw as expensive and residual compared to the largest desktop computer market. Apple today celebrates 30 years of laptops, that is MacBook and before that PowerBook: they survived the revolution of post-PC devices (such as iPhones and iPads) and today they have become more and more powerful and necessary.
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by Bruno Ruffilli
The birth of the PowerBooks
Knowing where we were (if we were) and what we were doing when the portable personal computer was born is one of those things that defines us, which acts as a discriminator between the generations. Between who got big before and who after the first PowerBook or the first MacBook. It’s a long story: the writer started tapping the keyboard of a Commodore 64 and then in 1989 a Macintosh Classic. But as early as 1992 I had gotten my hands on a PowerBook 100 to never get them off the keyboards of laptops for more generations than anyone wants to remember or admit. Up to the new ones MacBook Pro 14 and 16 with M1 Pro and M1 Max processor, which are coming to stores now. A long history, that of laptops, actually began more than half a century ago.
When Apple debuted the first laptop exactly thirty years ago, Jobs was no longer with the company. The brilliant co-founder of Apple (born in 1976) had been kicked out a few years earlier (in 1985) and he would not return before 1997 to save his creature in crisis. So it fell to John Sculley, the company’s number one (and supporter of Jobs’ departure), to take the stage at the Comdex in Las Vegas in October 1991 to announce “a new member of the Macintosh family”. They were actually 3 models: the PowerBooks 100, 140 and 170.
There had already been the Macintosh Portable, a kind of briefcase that weighed fifteen kilograms with a small monitor and a keyboard that came out from underneath. Had been released in September 1989, 5 years after the original Macintosh, but it was clearly a niche solution, which in fact did not go well at all. That failure, however, was crucial to understanding what to do with Apple’s laptops. However, it was certainly not the only case of a proto-laptop that did not sell well: all the portable computers of those pioneering years had also failed, such as battery-operated home computers and oversized calculators with large keyboard and a few inches LCD screen. To have a real laptop as we understand it today, we needed the vision of a man and 3 different companies: Ideo, Ibm and Apple.
What is a laptop
The idea of what a laptop should have looked like dates back more than half a century and predates the actual personal computer: he designed it Alan Kay, Turing Prize for Information Technology (the Nobel Prize for who writes code), who at the time worked at the Xerox Parc, the legendary Californian research center in which graphical interfaces and laser printers were invented and for which Kay was one of the protagonists.
However, as early as 1968, three years before the birth of the first desktop personal computer, Kay had designed the Dynabook. The computer was never made, it was a prototype to demonstrate what could and should have been done, but the scientist decided to publish his work in 1972, making public the idea that personal computing could be very different from the prehistoric one of the early home computer enthusiasts.
The Dynabook was defined as a “portable information manipulator”: it could be connected via radio to a large database and allowed any information to be accessed from anywhere. In the hand-made drawing by Kay himself for the research work, the first users designed for the Dynabook were children sitting on the floor, who surfed wirelessly on that network that would be born at least thirty years later. But the idea expanded beyond the education sector: the “computer for all ages” had to be easy. It was the computer that removed not only the cognitive difficulties of use (not surprisingly Kay is one of the fathers of the graphic interface with icons and menus), but also the inconveniences of use. Kay himself explained that the Dynabook and the computers of the future would be usable “like a dynamic book”: on vacation in Hawaii, sitting on the beach and leaning on a palm tree, but always connected via radio to the Net and with a battery that would last for days .
It is impossible to underestimate the impact that Alan Kay’s idea had on the whole market and on Apple in particular: Apple computers are called MacBook and before that PowerBook in homage to Dynabook, and Kay himself worked at Apple for a decade.
Ideo and the shape of the laptop
Instead, the physical shape of Apple computers, as well as that of modern laptops, derives from the first functional laptop, designed by the design company Ideo for NASA: it was called Grid Compass 1100, it cost 8 thousand dollars and it had been made in 1982. The structure with lid that contained the LCD screen closed on the keyboard and the palm rest (at the time the trackpad was still missing). The basic design had been invented for what would later become the rule for all computers. Since then, the functional revolutions of laptops have been very few
However, the first two real laptops, expensive, but modern and suitable for everyone, presented them at the same time by Apple and IBM. The latter realized the first ThinkPad in 1992 and, thanks to the group of Japanese designers who worked for the company, it assumed the characteristic shape of a black Bento box, which allowed it to be almost hermetically sealed.
Apple, on the other hand, took a completely different path and Sculley went the first PowerBook triptych on the market: plastic shells with a rationalist Dieter Rams design, dark beige colors, soft lines, an operating system for the modern era (it was System 7, which after several evolutions would retire exactly ten years later) and replaceable batteries. Apple’s first laptops came with a set of mature ideas, which the competition would take over over time.
The first generations of PowerBooks
As Apple faced a brief period of success, which was followed by nearly 10 years of crisis that culminated in the 1997-1998 restructuring run by Jobs after returning to the company, generations of laptop Apple became one of the references for many fans.
PowerBooks were powered by Motorola processors (25 different models) and then by PowerPc processors (other 22 models). Maintaining a substantially unchanged design, but with a series of small revolutions (larger and color screens, trackballs and then touchpads), Apple’s laptops became a reference in a world that in the 1990s increasingly appreciated mobility and possibility to always carry your computer with you.
Work on the move
The so-called digital nomads were born, people who moved from one environment to another, even between different offices in the same city, to talk to customers and suppliers, keeping a sort of replica of the office in the briefcase and then in the purse. In the case of Apple, there were also many early digital creatives, who used the laptop to make images or the first sites on the Web.
The backpack as a means of transporting computers would come later, with the generation of those born after 1970, who kept them on one shoulder strap and wanted different computers. Apple, in a much more competitive market, shifted gears: PowerBooks made of titanium and then of aluminum, but also iBooks, the laptops that served as a mobile alternative to the first iMacs of 1998. The iBooks, first colored and then in a milky white color (and black, in a last version), they were made of durable plastic and had a design that came from Jony Ive’s mind. They were the multimedia schoolbook of an entire generation starting in 2001.
The MacBook Air revolution
In January 2006, however, Apple took another step, and definitely: together with the new Intel processors that replaced the PowerPc G3, G4 and G5 (the latter never seen on laptops), a new generation of laptops that were simply called MacBook. And among these, in addition to a Pro and a normal version, a new device was also introduced that was initially much criticized: it was the first Air.
Apple’s ultra-thin was expensive, with very little power, he had an iPod hard drive (the version with solid state memory was optional, had 64 Gb of space and cost even more) and was practically without connection ports compared to the other models. It was called Air because it had to connect wirelessly, without the cables and cords that Steve Jobs hated. It was the ultralight revolution, with a revolutionary design idea: the body was made of aluminum obtained by extrusion, which few understood at that time, but which completely transformed the market because it made it possible to give strength and rigidity to ultra-thin frames.
The radical phase of Apple
The legacy of the MacBook Air is huge, and today almost all modern laptops, with the exception of gamer laptops, are essentially evolutions of that design and approach to technology. But Apple did not stop there and on the contrary has brought forward the evolution of laptops with a radical phase, a real Thermidor in which, starting from 2016, the dimensions have been reduced, all connection ports have been eliminated, flattened the keyboard to the limits of usability, introduced dubious functions (the TouchBar) and rethought the uses of the laptop. A radical phase and in part less effective than intended due to the growing weakness of Intel processors. A phase that ended last year.
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Apple Silicon and the new laptops
With the arrival of the processors made in Cupertino, that Apple Silicon for the MacBook Air and Pro 13 version M1 that arrived on the market 12 months ago, Apple gave a taste of what could have come. Computers increasingly powerful and cool, with battery that lasts longer and longer and uppercase performance with no impact on range. A transformation that is now confirmed by the new MacBook 14 and 16 with M1 Pro and Max type processors.
Performance has yet to be verified in the field, but the premise is excellent. A slim computer with an excellent screen even in sunlight, a battery that lasts almost a full day and the ability to connect with WiFi 6 to the Internet (or take advantage of the iPhone with 5G radio) is ideal for those who want to lean on a palm tree and relax in front of the sea, surfing the internet. Just as Alan Kay imagined 53 years ago.
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