The Computer Chronicles - Laptops and Handhelds (1991)

[@vmhanlon]

I was the lead software engineer (and later the PowerBook/MacBook Pro software manager) for the PowerBook line, starting with the original Macintosh Portable and continuing through the Macbook Pro up until 2009. The guy who came up with the keyboard forward layout first seen here in the PowerBooks was the chief hardware design engineer by the name of Jon Krakower, not a member of the vaunted Apple industrial design group. I remember him showing us a mockup of the layout where we could try it out and all of us on the core design team went, "Duh!", why didn't we think of this before? Of course for decades now this is the way all laptops are configured, but at the time it was ground breaking. The always secretive Apple was even more so during the development of the PowerBook line as we were terrified that a competitor would find out and beat us to market. Also, the PowerBook 100 was built by Sony. It was Apple's design, and in fact was pretty much a repackaging of the Portable. Sony wanted to be more involved in the design, but we weren't going to let them in.

[@tsalikaki]

Thank you so much for the insight!

[@jimmybuffet4970]

You'll be happy to know that I once came across a PB from 1994 that had been - to my knowledge - owned by one guy to hook up a couple Ensoniq sampler keybaords and a couple of TX7 (rack-mounted synths). And it still talked with the equipment just fine. This was probably around 2011.

[@khalidgraysen4848]

i know Im asking randomly but does anyone know of a tool to log back into an Instagram account?? I was dumb forgot the login password. I appreciate any help you can give me!

[@khalidgraysen4848]

@Ty Reign I really appreciate your reply. I got to the site on google and I'm trying it out now. Takes quite some time so I will get back to you later when my account password hopefully is recovered.

[@khalidgraysen4848]

@Ty Reign It worked and I now got access to my account again. Im so happy! Thank you so much you saved my account !

[@apexone5502]

After looking at one of the episodes from 1989, you can see how quickly technology advances. Laptops were already slimming down in 1991 while they were still big and clunky in '89. A mere 2 year span.

[@X_Leonhart]

3:14 That was the firestorm that destroyed Will Wright's home. A few years later, he created "The Sims" concept based on the experience of buying again all his stuff and starting a new life.

[@Clippy95]

My Left ear enjoyed this

[@AriannaEuryaleMusic]

go Mono

[@CoMmAnDrX]

@@AriannaEuryaleMusic I don't think anyone here wants mono! :D

[@benconway9010]

So wat was your right ear enjoying? Porn?

[@johnknight9150]

@@CoMmAnDrX Why not? Much more than you realise is in mono, and it has very appropriate uses. Mono is perfectly centred, and this show is probably already a mono signal that's running down the left channel. Converting this to mono would fix the issue.

[@IJ_uk]

If you are deaf in your left ear you have to turn 180 Deg so you can hear it 🤔

[@jj_1edzep]

Came here from the 1989 episode about laptops. How much could change in two years back then...

[@H2whoaMusic]

Same! It looks like a decade apart.

[@bottwaandcalover]

watching on my smartphone. Feels good.

[@johndonovan7018]

sorry you cant afford a real computer

[@vic7939]

@@johndonovan7018 such a constructive comment. Hope you are proud of yourself.

[@snx70]

A computer in your pocket? That was a silly idea and bound to fail!

[@weaponofmassconstruction1940]

@Andrew Tarrant It's a joke. Come on.

[@raven4k998]

@@weaponofmassconstruction1940 give him a break it's over his head as the idea dates back before he was born

[@RR-bz1gx]

​@Drew oof. Went right over your head.

[@VonDutchNL]

​@Drew Ok you aren't the smartest, are you?

[@JaredConnell]

​@drewsatawooosh

[@danielsantana540]

This video Quality is Great for a 1991 Video .

[@josephroseen7188]

Probs old vhs or something, depending on what it is they can be maintained or given redundancy for quite a while until they are digitally backed up

[@pikgears]

no, this channel seems to have found studio broadcast tapes, which allow far better quality than a vhs tape.

[@zg-it]

The host, Stuart Chiffet (sp?) had all of these and put them on KZbin for us. They were all original. There's a more recent interview where he says he had all these tapes and decided to put them up on KZbin.

[@AriannaEuryaleMusic]

I love and STILL prefer those little 90`s physical keyboards

[@raven4k998]

yeah they were cute weren't they?

[@ctcards2636]

Me too the clickyness is lacking in a lot of newer products out there these days for sure.

[@DanaTheInsane]

I wanted a color notebook so bad in the early 90s, but you could buy a really nice used car for what one cost!

[@oldtwinsna8347]

true. Computing as a hobby was just an awful painful time then if you didnt have the kind of disposable income needed to enjoy the advances. The 'regular folks' had to make do with tech up to a decade old and even that was not exactly cheap.

[@kiwi-bird]

Some of the technology that is on display here is actually quite remarkable for its time.

[@blumenkopf]

Yup, this looks lightyears ahead of what was on display in episodes just a few years prior.

[@pcpanikMusik]

The handwriting recognition for example…in 1991. Stunning.

[@uglitor]

This series is awesome!

[@SWRadioConcepts]

Wow that grid tablet and the pen are doing pretty much the exact same demos apple did with the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil. Right down to drawing circles to create geometric shapes that you could manipulate in the MS Office mobile apps. Very sophisticated hardware and software for 1991.

[@japanvintagecamera8869]

I was using some of the devices described in the video at that time. I remember the so-called flight simulator I used to play around with on my "laptop" computer at the time, and how I thought it was the bees knees. It had a sexy 8" monochrome monitor and a 1kg battery which had to be charged every 2 hours. Now I sit next to my Mac Pro in front of a 50" 4K monitor (it keeps me warm) with more computing power and memory than the entire Pentagon had in those days.

[@jeffyp2483]

and now you can watch computer chronicles showcase that 2 hour power on that portable cray!🤓

[@mauriciohuaman9688]

1:44 what a cool cd player. If it only had bluetooth I'd have it for sure

[@sbalogh53]

These new fangled devices will never take off....

[@jjhung2]

That's what I remember about 90's technology. We geeks would rave about how fast our 486 CPU or 14.4 baud modems were, but when it came time to demonstration, we were oblivious to the fact it took us 10 minutes of setup and boot to send a freaking fax. This host seamlessly moves right along while people were setting up their apps which were supposed to send things quick and easy.

[@oldtwinsna8347]

Yea old tech from those days pretty much stunk. I have few good memories of enjoying my time with PCs back then compared to what we have today.

[@isleifoterogarcia4478]

I got one of those HP-95LX palmtops and it was quite usable. I used as a terminal, as a data collector on sorting and handling drawings of engineers in Lotus 1-2-3. The batteries two AAs lasted about a week. It has a 40 characters x 16 line display. I paid $600 for it and at those times it was as be years ahead of everybody. Ah, time goes by.

[@asdfasdf4345artsdfg]

Interesting how Internet-oriented some of these were, a good few years before the World Wide Web took off.

[@legoman123481]

I love the design of the apple powerbooks. I don't know why but i like the blocky dark grey look.

[@Sgt_Glory]

I like the pen gestures on the Momenta - those command compasses look pretty handy, would be useful on today's tablets.

[@DigitalLogos]

"This can fit over 150 full-size books on it- more reading than you could ever do in your life" Something tells me this guy doesn't do a whole lot of reading.

[@carljiu8601]

> this guy doesn't do a whole lot of reading. Who does these days?

[@weaponofmassconstruction1940]

@@carljiu8601 Well yeah, I don't read much. But I love learning stuff from videos. We all do, including people who would never have read and would probably never have learned anything after school.

[@mkaney805]

I wish i could travel back in time and show these guys my S22 Ultra phone lol

[@martijnvanzanen4075]

Wow that thing on 9:00 ish. Is simple amazing for its time.

[@johnknight9150]

If the uploader is reading this, you can fix the issue of having the audio down the left channel by converting to mono. Don't be afraid of mono, it has its uses. :)

[@Frostie3672]

And here I am watching this on my Asus tuf A15 Ryzen 4900h laptop, how times have changed!

[@Frostie3672]

@Garrett Yarbrough still got all my commodore gear, two C64c computers, few amigas too, if I had the space to have it all set up I'd get it all out of the loft but after all this time I expect the whole lot would need to be recapped to be on the safe side & prevent any damage to the boards.

[@punishedexistence]

For the day, this was some pretty slick stuff. Now all this stuff is integrated in a phone that fits in your pocket. Ain't progress grand?

[@deacon6453]

Yeah, but still waiting until it can run most of My DOS apps or even Windows 3.1 if they get powerful

[@TBarnett]

And to think in the early 90's, GPS was being used and now just about every smartphone can help you determine where you are so quickly... 25 years later and we're all reaping the benefits.

[@SL4RK]

Much more surprising is the use of a cell phone as a modem, I wonder how that worked ? as far as I know there was no wap or gprs back then, were there any standards that allowed this ?

[@StarlancerAstro]

I love that a palmrest is a new idea, couldn’t afford any portable back then, had just made the leap from my Atari computer to a brand new 486, was the king for a bit as all my friends had 386s

[@dingdingdingdiiiiing]

I feel like those times went by way too fast.

[@whattheheck1000]

This would have been broadcast near the end of 1991, probably in November or December. Notice they talk about Comdex in the Random Access. That always happened in November. And the fire damage shown in the credits. There was a wildfire in Oakland, CA, a few miles from where CC was headquartered, on October 20, 1991. June 3, 2014 12:25 am

[@johnnypaintsticks8027]

What the heck

[@youseff500]

6 years later and who knew a tech company like AMD could be taking back the laptop cpu market from Intel. October 28, 2020 12:25 am

[@floydjohnson7888]

13:00 The NEC "office in a briefcase' looks like a proof-of-concept in hindsight.

[@ericwong432]

I thought that is nuclear bomb activator, but not because it does not have a key slot.🤣

[@nowthatsjustducky]

Nearly $5K for a laptop back then. Inconceivable.

[@precertvideo]

Hands up who else still has their Psion??

[@martinkunev9911]

both Windows 3.1 and OS/2 2.0 were released in April 1992.

[@markarca6360]

22:12 - That is Apple File Protocol at work. That still exists today in present-day Macs.

[@Kazuo1G]

For those of you who are curious, the color laptop is an AST Advantage NB-SX25.

[@johnbee1574]

I love it when they put rival companies together

[@DK640OBrianYT]

Excellent video quality. I bet these are digitized from the original 1" C-type broadcast videotapes.

[@Windsurfing345]

I remember watching this show when i was a teen

[@martinpickens2534]

25:28Apple guy is sweating bullets. This host is rarely surprised but that color screen had both of them breathless.

[@witchreturns2263]

It's to appreciate, that no matter how primitive these devices were, they keps doing work anyway

[@nitramluap]

3:55 - I reckon this GPS thing could be quite useful.

[@OkinawanSuidii]

best episode ever! I love this show

[@jozsiolah1435]

In those times, world traveling precious people filled in documents like this: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx…

[@basement_livin]

this was the MotorWeek of computers

[@jason_v12345]

"If you were going into a meeting where a pen was more socially acceptable...." Well, THAT stigma has certainly gone away since 1991!

[@BrookeK92]

I picked a bad time to be mostly deaf in my left ear.

[@mzxeternal]

Of course this all archaic, but here I am feeling bad for the NEC guy with his hobbled together briefcase setup next to the IBM guy who had all the same functionality in a single device. Even in 91, it would have been clear which was the better idea lol. Meanwhile forget even today, most of this stuff could have been done with a palm pilot connected to a cell phone maybe 6 years later. The speed in which the tech evolved in the 90s was insane.

[@weaponofmassconstruction1940]

Yeah... I have a smartphone from 2012 and one from 2019 and they can pretty much do the same stuff!

[@SjaakSchulteis]

I enjoyed so much the progress at that time.. but it was so expensive. If you see what you can get nowadays.... and then I hear people complaining about "screendoor effect" in VR... probably these are young people, never used an early pc. By the way, Kate Purmal.. wow she had beautiful eyes and the way she talked about computers... she must be around my age now... probably with beautiful grandchildren. I hope she still enjoys computing... 😊

[@UnbelievablyBased]

Had to make sure that my earbuds hadn't died again on one side

[@bikespj22]

They really should have made these an hour long. He cuts people off literally every question.

[@ArumesYT]

Because they tend to ramble on. He asks a question, gets the answer, and moves on. Otherwise you DO get one hour episodes but with the SAME amount of information.

[@oldtwinsna8347]

This is why: Stewart: Tell me how much faster your machine can compute over an older model? Sales guy: Benchmarks show 200% faster speeds and in the real world you could experience very close to that as well... Now just imagine being able to save all that time, increasing your productivity to get so much more done in the day. Why, you could go out for that afternoon tea that you always wanted to do but never was able to because of a slow computer. Purchase our system today and we'll also throw in a free bag made of the highest quality materials and super light weight that won't break your back while you carry your new speedy super machine!

[@dbloyd2]

I wish I could see people's reaction from watching these old Computer Chronicles videos maybe 100 years in the future. Also I would like to see what people use in the year 2120 and post my reaction video on KZbin.

[@ed7590]

I would love to find one of those full briefcase computers at 13:39, someone must have one somewhere!

[@QuaaludeCharlie]

The Internet 1991 , Save those old Computers :) QC

[@nenadcvele]

It would be really nice to see some TV program from US that isn't actually a long commercial.

[@loganmacgyver2625]

It kinda is, it's good marketing to demo these products

[@kozmokohler]

That "command compass" looks EXACTLY like the shortcut menu on a Wacom Cintiq...

[@RonKuzyk]

Nice fucking laptops! It was the classic era of computing.

[@EJ160E]

Yeah, let's "call" each other from "cell phones" from 5 feet away!

[@JC-XL]

Interesting how even back then Apple got the ergonomics right demonstrating the overall keyboard/touchpad configuration used on laptops to this day. While the other companies had these ridiculous track-balls on the side.

[@alexissummerlouisejones]

His hairpiece outshines all the technology on offer

[@andree1991]

Those prices are giving me cancer, not to mention they are in 1991 dollars

[@dukenukem6137]

I was just think the same thing! $5000 was equal to $15,000 Gas was $1 per Gal. I remember my dad paid $4000 for a 166mmx Gateway 2000 PC 😂

[@maricate]

The best episode for me

[@arriagatwo777]

It is the future or the past? I'm confused

[@chrwood70]

lasts 1 month on AA batteries, we still haven't made it back to 1991!

[@MrSmiley-mr3gg]

can it run Doom?

[@cameraman655]

9:42 Damn, now who the hell needs an iPad Pro, with these thingamabobs are out there? I want one... 😀

[@RonKuzyk]

God damn things surely have changed!

[@studiopond]

why does the credits have pictures of natural disasters?

[@RobertNES816]

Why mono!

[@artip777]

22:35 $4599... men! that's bullshit!

[@gman102formyspace]

Imagine showing these guys the raspberry pi

[@Scanner_51]

God damn 40 megabytes of memory!!

[@AgeingBoyPsychic]

Looks up "What are those shiny black rectangles everyone is staring at and poking?"

[@elifoust7664]

Where we going

[@georgef551]

Just imagine a computer that fits in your pocket, and can do what a full-size one can. Call me crazy, but you might be able to add phone abilities to it. I know, science-fiction.

[@oroville12345]

They have them look up the gpdwin 2 it's a little beast.

[@Kashaku3]

why does he say “movie” in the beginning????

[@gocsa]

Because he's got one of Roger Ebert's books on the device. He was a film critic, his books are about movies.

[@alexojideagu]

TO be honest Laptop design has barely changed

[@OmegaWolf747]

AfterDark still in the top ten!

[@bneyens]

3:43 - LIE! I just looked it up. The newest L5 GPS goes into orbit in 2027. For land surveyors it has a maximum long term peak accuracy of 2 centimeters. But this guy could do as little as 1 cm in 1991. Cool story bro.

[@chronicawareness9986]

whys the host always rushing lol back then they always in a hurry slow down

[@beastlydookie81]

Cocaine

[@McVaio]

Because there is limited time for the show. Everything has to be shown within the hour.

[@asou679]

Yeah, he seems really abrasive in this one.

[@Lord_of_The_World]

Wasn't the cost something like $1.00/1k of data back then? Something like an email would cost like $5.00

[@oldtwinsna8347]

It was expensive back then, yes. Most of the commercial communications were connected to Telenet/Tymnet which were essentially privately owned Internet connected systems. Companies like Compuserve simply slapped on an interface for the consumer.

[@pvtglarson1]

stew can read in the dark surprisingly

[@taintthinner1857]

Learning myself to sleep.

[@admiralandersen]

Psion doesn't make PDAs anymore, but is still the best.

[@TheRetroNobody]

That cost for that call from the IBM PC Radio? $47.00

[@chicken7002]

Watching this video in 2024 with my HP Omen Transcend 14 / RTX 4070.

[@Kaisersozze]

150 books is all the books you would want for the rest of your life?

[@rosemarysandcastle]

yes

[@Norubaki66]

Uuuu affordable at 2299... I know prices for notebooks were quite higher than now but...

[@mrfld]

19:32, for the face of a psychopath.

[@puppy_pause]

Oh I so don’t miss this. What the don’t mention was that this tech was expensive. And I don’t mean 1k like an iphone, I mean 2-3k.

[@oldtwinsna8347]

It wasn't a pleasant time to be alive if you didn't have the disposable income levels to buy these toys. In contrast today you can get a lot of great stuff super cheap. Back then the average joe had to buy tech that was easily 5- 10 years old and even then it wasn't cheap, and you got to remember 5-10 year old hardware back in those days was far more stretched out technology wise than it is today.

[@aleclitvinov]

0:26 the quick BOWN fox

[@alexojideagu]

22:20 Funny how people think a Cloud is something new

[@Kit_Bear]

Apple are still charging the same prices.

[@jansolo69]

Living the dream.. transmit AND receive fax!

[@H2whoaMusic]

Wireless handheld devices? It'll never catch on.

[@KYTHERAOfficial]

Precisely.

[@gentuxable]

7:45 lol they copied the iPad before it even existed... oh wait! :D

[@meyerfilms000]

+gentuxable ha, young'un. People don't realize we've had stylus tech since the 90's!

[@gentuxable]

Meyer Films of course I did. I even had a Compaq iPAQ H3630 some years later than that device appeared... meaning when I was no longer the poor school kid. But I found it funny how Apple went on everybody on the tablet thing saying about rounded edges and stuff...

[@meyerfilms000]

gentuxable Yeah, in general I think Apple made tech less scary for everyone. But I like the boxy, wires and buttons comps of the 90's

[@gentuxable]

Meyer Films Apple also failed with newton and the mac and IBM failed with OS/2 even if that was great technology in retrospect. I really don't know how Windows became so popular. Nobody really cared until the 90's and then there were better alternatives like Mac OS or OS/2 or even GeoWorks (or something like that I don't remember exactly) It's not the boxy wires and buttons but I liked how you could open them up and fix them yourself. Now you easily can't. Even if you'll get Error 53 eventually!

[@oblitum]

gentuxable i

[@jessesan2003]

Combovers at their finest.

[@245ben]

Technology wasn't that bad back then!

[@ens8502]

Not bad, not terrible