What would you have needed to carry with you in 1986 to match the utility of an iPhone today?

I’ve always been into electronic gadgets. I’ve also always been into carrying a bunch of crap that I “need” (or perceive that I need) around with me. My dream since I was a kid was always to be able to carry “everything” with me at once, in a convenient way.

It’s hard to get more convenient than a thin piece of glass, metal and plastic that fits easily into a jeans pocket. That’s the iPhone, and that’s today. My iPhone is almost unquestionably my most prized possession. Probably not just now, but of all time. It seems like it can do almost everything, which got me thinking.

25 years ago, I was a 12-year-old burgeoning tech nerd. I loved the Atari 2600 (yes, still) and was just a year away from getting my first computer. I had hundreds of cassette tapes and was already on my third or fourth Walkman. If you’d given me something like an iPhone back then, I probably would have died of ecstasy on the spot. But what 1980s stuff would I have had to lug around in my satchel back then to (roughly) approximate the functional capabilities I now (almost) take for granted in this one little device? I decided to compile a list.

1986 device: Sony Walkman portable cassette radio

In the mid-’80s, the Sony Walkman was the symbol of portable technology. As CDs overtook the popularity of cassettes in the ’90s, and Sony finally figured out how to make a portable CD player that didn’t skip if you so much as breathed on it, the Walkman was gradually replaced by the Discman.

And then along came the iPod, which itself has, ten years later, essentially become an iPhone minus the phone.

2011 app: iPod


1986 device: Microcassette recorder

As cool as the Walkman was, you couldn’t actually record with it (at least with most models). You could always lug a full-sized cassette recorder around, but if you were going for the latest and greatest in portability, that would be a microcassette recorder. Microcassettes never could match the audio fidelity of their full-sized siblings though, and were eventually replaced by digital devices that stored audio on a small hard disk and later on flash ROM. But why bother with one of those today?

2011 app: Voice Memo


1986 device: Nintendo Game & Watch LCD handheld

When I went into writing this post, I really hoped to at least give 1986 the original Game Boy, but my research says it wasn’t actually released until 1989. I never had one, so I didn’t remember. Yes, it’s true… if you wanted a handheld video game device in 1986, the best you could do was one of Nintendo’s single-game “Game & Watch” devices. As rudimentary as they seem today, their design was a clear inspiration for Nintendo’s current line of DS portable game devices.

I’ve owned two Game Boy Advance systems and three DSes over the past decade, but these days my DSi gathers dust in a cabinet while I carry over 50 video games in my pocket everywhere I go… thanks to my iPhone. iPhone gaming is still young, and in many ways the control schemes have yet to be perfected, but considering the significant price difference ($10 or less for almost all iOS games, vs. $30 or so for most DS games), the lack of a need for physical media, and the iPhone’s superior technical specs, it’s hard to see much of a future for the DS. (We’ll see what impact the soon-to-be-released 3DS has.)

2011 app: Angry Birds… or any of the 100,000 or so other iOS games


1986 device: Casio calculator watch

Calculator watches were so cool (at least, if you weren’t) in the ’80s, it’s hard to believe they would ever fade into laughable irrelevance. They were pretty impressive technology for the time though, and were irresistibly futuristic. It’s no wonder Marty McFly conspicuously sported one on his journey back to 1955… it bolstered his “future boy” cred in a way no nylon vest ever could.

2011 apps: Clock and Calculator


1986 device: Portable alarm clock

If you were too cool for a nerdy calculator watch back in the ’80s, your only option when traveling was to purchase a dedicated travel alarm clock. Some of these were pretty well-designed, but such a single-purpose device is anathema today. Besides, I’m sure the sight of one of these in a carry-on would raise a TSA eyebrow or two.

2011 app: Alarm Clock


1986 device: Pocket calendar/datebook

Pocket calendars have come in countless variations for almost as long as printing has existed, some more useful than others. Wallet card calendars like the one shown here are about as useless as they get, but that didn’t stop me from having at least one of them in my wallet at all times as a 12-year-old… especially since I didn’t have any money to put in it.

Now, not only does the iPhone’s calendar provide all of the capabilities of even the most overstuffed datebook, it can update automatically and even beep to remind you that you’re running late for that important business meeting.

2011 apps: Calendar and Contacts


1986 device: Pocket compass

I admit, I’ve never really had much use for a compass. I don’t spend a lot of time out in the wilderness, and I think a compass would only confuse my natural sense of direction in the city. But I recognize the importance of these devices, and thanks to the iPhone’s various internal sensors, all of the capabilities of a real magnetic compass can now live in software.

2011 app: Compass


1986 device: Mead memo book

Ah, the trusty Mead memo book. My dad wrote a thousand grocery lists in these while I was growing up, and the little bits of paper that tore off the spiral binding over repeated openings and closings were everywhere. These days there are more sophisticated alternatives if you still like to put pen to paper and then stuff it all in your pocket, but I prefer not to have to try to decipher my own handwriting.

2011 app: Notes


1986 device: Minolta Talker point-and-shoot 35mm camera

Sure, there were plenty of pocketable point-and-shoot cameras back in the ’80s, and of course the venerable Polaroid instant camera was still going strong. But no camera — truly, no device of any kind — epitomizes pointless ’80s novelty technology better than the Minolta Talker. I wasn’t able to verify that the Talker existed in 1986 — I think more likely it dates to 1987 or 1988 — but we had one, and I’ll never forget such helpful photographic advice as “Load film” or the classic “Too dark… use flash.”

Even at that credulous age, I wondered, if it can tell you need the flash, why can’t it just turn the flash on automatically?

2011 apps: Camera, Hipstamatic, Instagram, etc.


1986 device: JVC camcorder

Ah yes, the JVC VideoMovie. That distinctive red and black camcorder, immortalized by my hero Marty McFly. We owned one of these. It was the stuff of legend. It also, despite its considerable size, used the bizarre VHS-C format tapes. These were about 1/3 the physical size of a regular VHS cassette, but the tape itself was the same width and was compatible with regular VHS VCRs… with the help of a VHS tape-sized adapter that the VHS-C tapes would snap into. Unfortunately, since the cassettes were so small, they only had enough room to hold 20 minutes’ worth of tape. I hope Doc packed a couple of cases of blanks along with his plutonium.

(And, yes, übergeeks, I know Doc forgot to pack the plutonium. What, you think you’re the only ones who’ve watched the movie 500 times?)

2011 app: Camera


1986 device: Motorola DynaTAC mobile phone

When you look at early cell phones, it’s a wonder the devices ever caught on. Of course, they didn’t really catch on when they were the size of a small refrigerator and emitted enough radiation to make your head glow in the dark. But the fact is, you could own a cell phone back in 1986 and, well, that’s saying a lot right there, isn’t it?

OK… I really can’t come up with anything to justify the existence of this monstrosity. Incidentally, the guy in the picture is Martin Cooper, inventor of the modern cell phone. Depending on your definition of “modern.” Note his seeming reluctance to get it too close to his head.

2011 app: Phone


1986 device: Rand McNally pocket road atlas

I recently watched the classic 1964 James Bond movie Goldfinger, and was amused by the GPS-like device Bond had in his car. (GPS was just becoming available to civilians in the ’80s, and it looked like this.) As far as I know, not even Her Majesty’s Secret Service had anything approaching this kind of technology in the ’60s. In many ways it seemed as futuristic (or more so) as some of the stuff that would appear on Star Trek a couple years later. And yet, it’s now something that is not only common in a lot of ordinary cars, but we even carry it in our pockets.

Back in the ’80s, though, the only way to carry road maps in your pocket was with a little book like this, which was only useful if you were willing to limit yourself to freeways and a lot of guessing.

2011 app: Maps


1986 device: Newspapers, magazines, books

No industry is reeling from the iPhone (and the iPad) the way publishing is. Newspapers, magazines, books… publishers of all kinds are trying to discover viable business models in the world of paperless publishing. (And here I thought we’d already worked all of this stuff out with the web over the past 15 years.)

One thing is certain, though: however you like to get your news, information and entertainment, with an iPhone it’s already in your pocket.

2011 apps: Reeder, Instapaper, newspaper/magazine apps, iBooks, Kindle, etc.


1986 device: Citizen portable LCD TV with 2-inch B&W screen

Yes… a portable LCD TV in the mid-’80s. Don’t believe it? I had one of these, exactly as shown. It had a 2-inch black-and-white screen. And, strangely, the screen was in the top of that flip-up lid. The bottom part had a mirror, which was what you looked at to view your program. Why? Well… backlight technology was feeble and battery-sucking. The lid was translucent, and if you were in a bright enough environment, the ambient light would shine through, illuminating the screen. There was also a bulky snap-on backlight attachment for use in dimmer surroundings, but if this was in one of your pockets, the rest of them better be filled with AAA batteries or you wouldn’t be watching much.

True, TV tuner technology doesn’t exist in the iPhone. But what the iPhone has is better… with iTunes, Netflix, PBS and more, you’ve got on demand TV… in full color, backlit, no snap-ons or AAA batteries required.

2011 apps: iPod, Netflix, PBS, etc.


1986 device: Flashlight

OK, OK. This flashlight is from the 1960s. But my grandparents had one exactly like this when I was a kid in the ’80s. The big black thing on the side had magnets in it, allowing it to stick to the side of the refrigerator, which is where they always kept it.

If you don’t have an iPhone 4 (which I don’t, but which has an LED flash for the camera), the only source of light is the screen itself. Pretty dim for a flashlight, but it works in a pinch. There are flashlight apps out there, but unless it’s one that powers on the camera LED, I think just turning the thing on so the screen lights up is as good as any of the dedicated apps.

2011 app: Any one of the countless flashlight apps


1986 device: TRS-80 Model 100 portable computer

It’s a bit of a stretch to call the iPhone a portable computer, at least when compared to modern portable computers. But considering the capabilities (and perhaps I’m using that term ironically) of the portable computers that existed in 1986, the iPhone is like having a Cray supercomputer in your pocket. A 3.5-inch touchscreen is never going to replace a full-fledged computer for serious work, but still, if you really have to, you can get some work done. I’ve managed to do some emergency sysadmin work from my iPhone sitting in a gas station parking lot while traveling.

2011 apps: Documents To Go, AirSharing, iSSH, etc.


All of this just barely scratches the surface, of course. But I think it demonstrates the huge impact the iPhone has had on me as a manifestation of all of my childhood fantasies about futuristic technology. You can keep your flying cars. Just let me keep my iPhone.

Image sources:
Marty McFly with JVC VideoMovie camcorder and calculator watch
Sony Walkman portable cassette player
Aiwa microcassette recorder
Nintendo Game & Watch handheld LCD video game
Casio calculator watch
Braun travel alarm clock
Coca-Cola pocket calendar
Pocket compass
Mead memo book
Minolta Talker camera
JVC VideoMovie camcorder
Cell phone inventor Martin Cooper with a Motorola DynaTAC
Rand McNally Pocket Road Atlas
Time magazine cover featuring Space Shuttle Challenger explosion
Citizen portable LCD TV
Rayovac 1960s flashlight
TRS-80 Model 100 portable computer
1980s GPS equipment

Addendum, April 2, 2011: If you’re hoping to truly recreate that 1986 experience on your iPhone, check out this Game and Watch-inspired iOS game, Monkey Labour!

Great Dieter Rams interview

Dieter Rams, legendary industrial designer from Braun in the 1950s and ’60s, pretty much invented my design aesthetic. I can’t imagine what the world of technology would look like without his pioneering work. Brilliant.

I especially like his design principle #10: “Good design is as little design as possible.”

I probably didn’t hear of Dieter Rams until about ten years ago, but I’ve seen the world through his eyes since I was a kid. Most of these Braun products were not readily available in the U.S. in those days (the late ’70s and early ’80s), but their designs were so influential that just about everything you could get here still looked like them, or pale imitations thereof.

Jason Kottke also tidily sums up Rams’ influence on modern industrial design:

And hey, I didn’t know that a book had been published on Rams’ work. I bet Jony Ive has at least three copies.

I’ll take one of everything, please.

Source: Monoscope via kottke.org

Help! I’m stuck in the ’60s!

A strange thing is happening to me. I’m suddenly feeling compelled to cultivate a long-dormant interest in 1960s pop culture (specifically, music and movies, and the graphic design associated therewith).

It’s not like I’ve never been “into” the ’60s. There’s plenty of ’60s music I like, especially the hard bop and early electric jazz from the likes of John Coltrane, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock and Miles Davis. And the early prog rock albums of Yes, King Crimson, et al, even though most of that didn’t happen until the very end of the decade (1969). And then, of course, there’s The Beatles. Need I say more? And I’ve always enjoyed the visual aesthetic of the ’60s, from the tail end of Mid-Century Modern into the psychedelia of the Woodstock era. But I’m a child of the ’70s at heart (and biologically). I’ve always been more into ’70s music and ’70s aesthetics than ’60s music and ’60s aesthetics. But over the past few days I’ve found myself thinking more about the decade preceding my birth.

It all started when I showed the kids Help! That’s the surreal, hypercolor second Beatles film: part Marx Brothers, part James Bond, part (as Martin Scorsese suggests in the liner notes to the DVD) proto-Monty Python, with the first hints of the psychedelic fantasy of much of the band’s late work. It’s no Yellow Submarine, not even Magical Mystery Tour. But it’s definitely more “out there” than A Hard Day’s Night, the band’s “mockumentary” (before the term existed) debut film from the previous year.

The kids loved it, and I did too, more than I remembered from the one and only time I had seen it before, back in college. They watched it again today (twice). And that got me thinking more about The Beatles. I already own the boxed set (stereo version… though I’d happily accept the mono box as a gift if you’re feeling generous), but I’ve never owned (nor even heard) Let It Be… Naked, the 2003 re-release of the band’s final album stripped of the orchestral excesses slapped on the original release by Phil Spector without the band’s input. So I headed over to Amazon and bought it. While I was at it (gotta get that Super Saver shipping, you know), I also threw in a couple of kitschy ’60s classics my CD collection has been woefully missing: Herb Alpert’s Whipped Cream & Other Delights and the self-titled release by Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’66.

What led me to those, besides my general spirit of ’60sphilia? That’s easy… after watching Help! I put The Beatles on shuffle in iTunes, and their recording of “A Taste of Honey” (from their debut, Please Please Me) came on. I’ve never really been into the band’s earliest albums (having never even heard the albums before Help! in their entirety until I got the boxed set in September), and I had more or less been completely unaware they’d even covered this song, which, of course, was also given the Tijuana Brass treatment on… Whipped Cream & Other Delights. From there it was a small hop to Sergio Mendes, who, incidentally, was fond of covering Beatles songs, including “Day Tripper” on the album I ordered.

Small world, the ’60s.

A few other things I noticed, watching Help! last night:

  1. I’ve spent years listening to Paul sing “Flew in from Miami Beach BOAC” in the opening line of “Back in the USSR,” never really knowing what BOAC was… but assuming it was an airline. Well I noticed in the beginning of Help! that the sinister swami Clang (played, rather absurdly, by Australian actor Leo McKern) is given a BOAC airline ticket by Ahme (also absurdly played by English actress Eleanor Bron). (Of course, I could have just consulted Wikipedia.)
  2. Late in the film, when all of England joins in singing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony to soothe the escaped tiger threatening Ringo’s life, I noticed that the soccer match is between Burnley and Tottenham Hotspur, the latter being a favorite team of some Premier League loving friends of mine who frequent The Local on Saturday and Sunday mornings to catch the Spurs’ matches.
  3. The one thing from the film that made a lasting impression on me 15 years ago, when I first saw it, was the Beatles’ delightful set of rowhouses, which all open into one large space (divided into four separate living areas, by color). George’s green space, with its indoor lawn; Paul’s white space, with its illuminated organ that rises from the floor; John’s brown space with a bed and reading nook embedded in the floor; and Ringo’s blue space with assorted food and beverage vending machines built into the wall. The moment when they all approach their own individual doors from the street, and then walk into this single open space is priceless.

I think, though, more than anything else, the thing that makes the biggest impression on me, seeing The Beatles in “living color,” engaging in their mid-’60s silliness, is the splash from the trailer (below): “Seven new songs!” The songs in this movie are woven so deeply into the fabric of my life, and of our culture, that it’s almost incomprehensible that they were brand new when this movie was made, written expressly for the movie. As much as I can relish the experience of watching this movie and listening to the music, there’s no way I can ever experience the ’60s as something fresh and new, with all that has happened in the 40+ years since then (including the entirety of my life) still waiting in the mysterious and unknowable future.

I actually remember the ’70s. Sure, it’s the late ’70s, and they’re the faded and fuzzy memories of a small child. But I still have firsthand memories of that period in history. I remember when disco was popular and Jimmy Carter was president. But I will never know a time when The Beatles were actively recording new music. I’ll never know the feeling of anticipating new Beatles music. The closest I’ll ever come is playing Beatles Rock Band. And that’s the strangest thing about introducing my kids to the music and the wonder of The Beatles. They love it… they’re just eating it all up. And that’s great. But I remember when my mom introduced me to them as a kid, and they were already an artifact of history.

Ultimately the most exciting thing about all of this is that it’s even possible for me to explore the ’60s at all. The technologies that came into widespread use in the 20th century allow me to hear this wonderful music that was played before I was alive, and to see people on an illuminated screen, moving before my eyes, doing things that they did a decade before I was born, and four decades before my kids were born. In all the previous hundreds of millennia of human history, there was no way to capture the sound of a human voice, the exact look of a human face, the idiosyncrasies of an individual’s movements, and record them for the benefit of future generations. And now we live in an era where technology is so incomprehensibly advanced, and moving ahead so rapidly, that the iPods Apple produced just 5 years ago seem quaint, and thereby the scratched film and vinyl of the analog era, of the 1960s and beyond, appear positively ancient. Yet someone living even a century ago would be amazed at what was waiting just a few decades hence, and someone from a hundred years before that would not even believe a horseless carriage could be possible, to say nothing of an airplane… or an iPhone.

Wow… well, needless to say, I didn’t set out to get this heavy when I started writing this post. But it certainly sheds some light on why I have such a passion for technology. Now I’ll end on a lighter note: as promised, the original trailer for Help!

Update (August 30, 2023): Well, I stumbled upon this old post today, and realized the video above wasn’t working… because it was using an old Flash-based embed code. But as it turns out, that didn’t matter, because the video itself had subsequently been taken down from YouTube. So, for the moment, I’ve restored it by finding another copy of the trailer on YouTube, unfortunately squished horizontally, but still… you get the gist. And now in another ~15 years (when I’m… wait for it… 64) I’ll revisit this and see what other aspects of the technology have become obsolete.

Panic’s “Atari” game art, framed and hung at Room 34 HQ

The other day I mentioned the super-cool watercolor-and-pencil game art Panic recently commissioned as part of a reimagining of their Mac software as early ’80s Atari 2600 games.

I ordered both the reproduction game boxes and the art prints, and they arrived just four days later (i.e. yesterday). They look amazing. As recommended by Panic, I headed out to IKEA this morning and picked up a couple of Ribba frames. The art prints were specifically designed to fit perfectly into these frames. I contemplated getting frames for all four of them, but at $20 a pop it seemed a bit much. So I went with two, for the two Panic programs I actually use (Coda and Transmit). It was just as well, anyway. Since they’re so big, two is all that fit on the wall above my desk!

The photo below shows Room 34 HQ, now graced with these fantastic looking prints. This wall was blank for months, and I had just been thinking I really needed to hang something up there, when these prints became available. The timing was perfect and I couldn’t be happier with the results! (Unfortunately the photo probably reveals, more than anything else, the limitations of the iPhone camera, especially indoors at night. I had every light in the place turned on but this was the best I could manage.)

panic_at_room34

Holy. Freakin’. Crap.

I love Panic, Inc. They make two of my indispensable web developer software tools: Transmit and Coda. And they have a great attitude. Their founder is a cool guy. And now, to top all of that off… they’re Atari freaks.

Oh man. I love this. I have a few quibbles with some of the details of their fake screenshots — things that aren’t actually possible (as far as I know) with the technical limitations of the Atari 2600. But it’s no matter. I absolutely love this stuff… it’s even better than the Venture Bros. Season 3 DVD art. Check it out:

Panic Atari art