Tedium Highlight in Computers: How the processor socket reflects an era of bygone upgradability. 

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Tag results: Computers

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.

Hack Back to the Mac

Why the Hackintosh era, even if it looks like it might just dead-end thanks to Apple Silicon, was still a useful phenomenon for the Mac.

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.

Touch And Go

Pondering the disastrous fate of the HP TouchPad, an early tablet based on WebOS that’s best known for being the subject of a well-remembered fire sale.

The Internet Of Trash

We may have made a horrible mistake by unnecessarily making our consumer electronics devices smart—and removing generations of future use in the process.

My Modular Mind

What makes modular designs great for consumers often makes them troublesome for businesses, or why you can’t upgrade an iPhone these days.

Text By Procedure

A short history of procedurally generated text, which both humans and computers have had a hand in making throughout history.

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.

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.

The Other Windows

Before Windows became a fact of life for most computer users, a scrappy upstart named GeoWorks tried taking Microsoft on. It failed, but it gave us AOL.

Slot Wars

The battle to replace the standard expansion slot in the IBM PC reflected an effort by two sides of the PC world to gain control. Spoiler: The clone-makers won.

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.

Upgrade Arbitrage

The charm of buying old workstation hardware on the cheap to support your modern computing needs. If it doesn’t work for them, it might just work for you.

Old Computers, New Inspiration

Some of the best highlights from the 2019 edition of VCF East, the long-running retro computing event that puts vintage machines in a modern context.

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.
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