Tedium Highlight in Computer history: The hardware company Iomega pulled off a neat trick with its Zip disk: It was proprietary, but popular. But it was a bad thing when things started clicking. 

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Tag results: Computer history

You Spin Me Right Round, Baby

Before hard drives became the main way for us to back up our stuff, they were a key evolution for the business world. They were also huge and costly.

Booting Up The Cash Register

Computers didn’t immediately lend themselves to retail, but ambitious early computer retailers sold ‘em anyway. Eventually, they got trampled.

The Scrolling Orb

The evolution of the trackball, which is more than an upside-down mouse. It's the Royal Canadian Navy’s greatest gift to modern-day computing. Really.

Bog-Standard Multimedia

Why the PC industry standardized on multimedia in the early ’90s, and why that standardization effort didn’t really last.

I’m Controlling Your Cursor

The evolution of remote desktop access, and why it’s a bad idea for water supplies to be managed through remote desktop access without decent security measures.

It’s All In The Cards

With PCMCIA (also known as PC Card), it was easy to upgrade our old laptops. But for years, the tech was relegated to a depressing bureaucratic fate.

All Penn, No Teller

Pondering the success that Penn Jillette, the loud half of Penn & Teller, found as a sometimes-rebellious big-name computer magazine columnist in the ’90s.

Innovation Versus Preservation

How we keep screwing over yesterday’s technology due to an intent focus on what we’re doing today. The problem of planned obsolescence is getting worse.

Gateway Country

Thinking about the globalization of the computer industry through a tech company so American it prominently promoted its birth on an Iowa farm on its packaging.

Driver Disaster

Why USB ports changed the world for the better, or what I learned from a futile month of trying to get a 25-year-old webcam working on a modern PC.

Simulated Fireworks

How computers have helped to reinvent fireworks displays through timing and elaborate simulation techniques. It’s kinda like a mix of old and new technology.

Not iPod, iPAQ

There was a time when the iPAQ was ubiquitous part of the handheld market. But before that, the forgotten Compaq-borne brand surfaced in many bizarre contexts.

The Squeal of Data

The through line between the telegraph and the computer is more direct than you might realize. Its influence can be seen in common technologies, like the modem.

A Kernel Of Failure

How IBM bet big on the microkernel being the next big thing in operating systems back in the ’90s—and spent billions with little to show for it.

I Hack Because I Love

The Hackintosh has become a phenomenon in recent years, despite knotty ethical questions, because Apple’s neglected superfans won’t stop thinking different.

The Platform Microsoft Forgot

The MSX computer standard was big in both Japan and Brazil. But despite a sizable cult, it may be the most obscure part of Microsoft’s history. Here’s why.

Socket To Me

Why the processor socket, an important part of most desktop computers, lost its upgrade path as computers became smaller and more integrated.

Double Trouble

How a court battle involving groundbreaking disk-compression software foreshadowed Microsoft’s status as an antitrust darling.

Clippy Couture

Clip art gets a bad rap as an artform, in part because it’s everywhere. Let’s give it some grudging respect by filling in some historic gaps.

Click, Clack

The famed mechanical keyboard switch manufacturer Cherry has been around since the 1950s—but it's only been defined by keyboard switches in the past decade.
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