Bad Friday

Laptop Ballet.

Sadly, I have been enjoying the tragic millenial Middlebrow podcast. Dan Rosen is an asshole and Brian is charming. Dan is more likeable in his reels where he skins rich people alive for having shit taste in stuff. Alec Baldwin blocked him. Mark Zuckerberg learned nothing from him.

https://www.instagram.com/middlebrowpod/

One of Rosen's reels features another, um, comedian doing Macbook shortcuts ballet. He never has to press click and treats his list of special commands like it's a libretto. I learned about hotkeys on a PC but I suspected they were a Steve Jobs and Wozniak collaboration but actually it was an employee Jobs poached from Xerox, Larry Tesler, who developed the shortcut system based on the layout of the QWERTY keyboard. This kinesthetic intuitive approach culminated with the release in 1983 of the Lisa. Her design team pioneered the Graphic User Interface over the Operating System and she came with the first mouse. But it cost $10 000 to buy new in the US. Worse, Kevin Costner was cast in a JFK Jr style ad for it.

Plus Steve Jobs sabotaged its price on his way out so the cheaper Macintosh in 1984 would become the household name. Poor Lisa! I know how she feels plus the extraordinary tale of how thousands of units waiting to be repurposed ended up in a Utah landfill.

Apple was not going to let anyone take a byte out of them. I've always thought the Eve metaphor was the strongest part of their brand. I wish all tech lords were affable dreamers like the Woz. Instead our thumbs are ruining us.

I mention computers because I have been trying all day to make a working computer out of the three Macbooks I have managed to ruin. It's Good Friday and even the one with the working keyboard is dying on the cross. Sigh. For Talia was so loved that people gave her laptops so that her writing career could live and the world would be cleansed of her sins? I'm paraphrasing the gospels because like Dan Rosen I'm an asshole. And sometimes I have bizarre luck.

I have high hopes for Sunday. I'm sure one of them will do the zombie shuffle and come back to life. I even tried giving one of the broken screens a mirimiri. I am insane. But also it worked briefly.

Anyway the only thing worse than having technical difficulties is describing them to people. If someone could lend me a remote keyboard for a few hours I can resurrect at least one of them. It’s also the only time I've ever really tried to talk to Siri. Fuk her tbh. Technology should not play hard to get.

Lisa should have been called Eve but she was named after the daughter Jobs also neglected.

Long live the Woz!