Turning an apple logo into a monitor, and how Microsoft tried to do it five years ago.

via edsjunk.net and Zee M. Kane at thenextweb.com

This is purely ornamental, and looks cool. Someone decided it would be cool to mod the apple logo into its own monitor. Be the coolest guy in the cafe, you know.

It reminds me of back when I worked at Microsoft. There was a big initiative among the mobile computing teams -- getting these mini monitors working so that you could check your next appointment / read your email without ever opening your laptop.

That's because standby mode sucked so much on Windows (kind of still sucks today, compared to OS X) -- rather than fix standby, it was decided that lets make ANOTHER device that you could tell OEMs to make and built into the outside of the laptop so people don't even have to open their laptops anymore.

This approach reminds me of the millions spent on designing a pen that would work in space by NASA. What did the Russians do? Use a pencil.

What did Apple do? Make standby mode actually work.

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Posted 6 months ago

10 comments

May 05, 2009

Lewis Butler said...

Nasa spent $0 developing a pen that would work in space. that's right, -=ZERO=-

http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp

May 05, 2009

Mark Rampton said...

The story of NASA's million spent on a pen isn't true actually. They did develop a pen to in space under near zero g conditions, but the driving concern for this was safety: pencils are actually dangerous in space (think lead/graphite chips floating in space waiting to be inhaled for get stuck in your eye or a vital piece of machinery -- and also the fact that the cabin is pressurised by mostly oxygen thus making pencils (at least wooden pencils) an even greater risk due to their very low flash temp).

May 05, 2009

Garry Tan said...

Oops, I got debunked! At least for the NASA anecdote. ;-)

May 05, 2009

Jerry Lin said...

Also, hate to say it, but a secondary display that I can read without opening the notebook would actually be pretty awesome, no?

May 05, 2009

Sachin Agarwal said...

time, weather, 1 or 2 upcoming calendar items would be sorta awesome.

then again, my iphone basically is like a secondary display for my computer.

What did Apple do? Make another device and sell it to you for another $200

May 05, 2009

Harmanas Singh Chopra said...

ditch the laptop. mobile comp. + pocket projector. not exactly discrete, but it's more portable and accessible. and it uses less power (the point of putting the machine in standby in the first place).

May 06, 2009