WHATEVER happened to the laptop computer? Two years ago, on my flight to Las Vegas for Comdex, the annual microcomputer trade show, every second or third passenger pulled out a portable, ostensibly to work, but more likely to demonstrate an ability to keep up with the latest fad. Last year, only a couple of these computers could be seen on the fold-down trays. This year, every one of them had been replaced by the more traditional mixed drink or beer.

Was the laptop dream an illusion, then? Or was the problem merely that the right combination of features for such lightweight computers had not yet materialized? The answer probably is a combination of both views. For the most part, the portable computer is a dream machine for the few.

—The New York Times panning the laptop computer in 1985

via BoingBoing

Hank Green has some interesting ideas on rethinking the cost-per-impression ad model:

Imagine that you would like to consume a piece of content, but in between you and that content is a paywall. They’re asking $15 for one person to view the content one time. While a YouTube video might net you $2 per thousand viewers, this fantasy world I’ve just described will net you $15,000 per thousand impressions…A $15,000 CPM!

With a $15,000 CPM, every two thousand views is a full-time, living-wage human per year!

Of course, this model would never work…except that it works every day at every movie theater in America.

As he admits, some of the numbers sound crazy, but if you read the whole post and actually sit with his ideas, it’s not crazy at all.

via Cameron Moll

Horace Dediu tries to figure out how we’ll figure out if the Apple Watch is a success:

1. Language. Measure whether “Watch” will come to mean “Apple Watch”. “Phone” has come to mean not only “smartphone” but also all mobile/cellular phones and not just things used for calling but things used for all manner of information. This is a great test because the theft of semantics can only be accomplished through a degree of ubiquity of influential mindshare. Incidentally, the brand may well have been designed to do just that.
2. A measurable and significant reduction in the use of the iPhone. The Watch peels off uses from the iPhone and therefore the more it peels off, the less remains. However, that which remains will be more uniquely valuable to the incumbent. This is the process of carving and erosion that the PC experienced vs. mobile devices in general.

“The theft of semantics.” I love that phrase.

via Lifehacker

Taken from the National Archives

via Twitter

Illustrator Jon Contino was interviewed by The Great Discontent:

I started freelancing immediately after college. When you leave school, you’re conceited. I saw other people who were making money and I thought, “I’m better than those guys and I’ll make twice as much as them.” I tried the freelance thing, but I couldn’t get it together–I had no clients and no money. I ended up taking a job at a local agency that served only financial advisors and every client wanted the same thing done in the same way. It was very limiting and I was out of there after two months. The next job I took was for a print broker that did design on the side. Everyone who worked there was a designer, but the majority of their money was made from designing and printing club fliers, so it wasn’t the exact position I was looking for. I also took on some pet projects and got a taste of doing some cool stuff and actually making money. About a year after that, I decided to open up my own studio and try my hand at it because I was done working for someone else.

I love origin stories.

Contino is one of my favorite illustrators, but even guys at the top of their game like him had to start somewhere.

via Laughtard

via Sad and Useless

Chart via NetMarketShare via CNet

I’ve been pointing this out to people ever since I learned about it in my college graphic design class 20 years ago.

I’m amazing how many people still have never seen the arrow.

A common response after pointing out the arrow is, “Wow! So that arrow is deliberate?”

Yeah, you see, graphic design is about composition. Negative and positive space working together to activate the page or the screen you’re looking at, making you an active part of the message decoding…. ah, nevermind, you don’t care.

via Brand New