The most
outstanding example was the pull-tab, which back in the early
1970s banished the need for a can opener. While Peter took it for
granted nowadays that all you had to do was pop the top on a can
of soda to sip its contents, he could remember back to when he
was a boy, when you had to use a can opener to get to what was
inside. It was this fact, that Locke was the one to introduce the
pull-tab, that appealed to Peter more than anything else. He
compared the metaphor to the Mate and Joey. The Mate was the
first all-in-one portable computer (though inside the company
they referred to it as a "luggable," rather than a true portable)
that you could easily move from room to room, place to place, but
it was nonetheless difficult to use; you first had to understand
the utility "tool" programs that controlled the machine and its
programs before you could fully employ all of its features.
Getting into the Joey, on the other hand, was easy, intuitive,
like using a pop-top can; all you had to do was to look at it to
understand how to use it, no special tools or knowledge were
required. The built-in address book and calendar and phone dialer
and e-mail program all looked like, and behaved like, their real
world, paper-based counterparts. Plus, it was much smaller than
the Mate and truly portable, able to run on its rechargeable
battery for days at a time.
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