Bill Moggridge, GRiD Compass Designer, Dies 29
judgecorp writes "Bill Moggridge, the British-born designer of the first laptop computer has died aged 69. The GRiD Compass was a computing landmark, designed to meet a US government request for a briefcase-sized computer, and first sold for $8000 in 1982. The GRiD compass was used widely, and taken into orbit on the Space Shuttle. It embodied industrial design principles and paved the way for subsequent laptops and devices. Moggridge's company ID Two, later IDEO, also designed the Palm V."
Truly sad day for design... (Score:5, Interesting)
In a recent documentary he described how much time and effort went into the case form factor, the keyboard positioning, the screen, even a foreign object ejection system to kick pens and other devices out of the hinge if they fell in, and how once he finally got a finished product and started playing with it, how the software experience totally trumped the physical experience. Granted, had the physical experience been negative then it's probably safe to say that this would have been noticed, but it seems that in this case, the poor software interface negated most of what he achieved with the hardware.
My wife's laptop is a Lenovo Thinkpad X301, which for me is just about the pinnacle of laptop design. It has a good size screen, the keyboard feels right, it packs in an optical drive and connectors, and its battery doesn't protrude, but it only weighs 2.9lb. The case has that ruggedized feel that formerly-IBM Thinkpads had, and it's traveled overseas with us as a very welcome tool. She'll often take it instead of a work-issued Toshiba when she travels for work if she doesn't have to do anything sensitive it's that good.
It doesn't seem like companies want to give us that kind of product anymore. There is no true successor to the X301, and it feels like the last vestiges of IBM's design are essentially gone now.
Historical footnotes (was Re:A better era.) (Score:5, Interesting)
Because they were bought out by AST/Tandy (who wanted the government contracts, then didn't understand why they couldn't keep them when they didn't continue making computers to the same specifications).
I had one (paid an embarrasingly high price for it in my foolish youth --- should've invested the money instead) and it was definitely one of the nicest things I ever owned (echoing Penn Jillette's sentiments on this back when he used to write the back page editorial for _PC Computing_ magazine).
Nice touches:
- Bubble memory for hard-drive like data storage in an era before portable hard drives
- the battery was removable and the power supply was shaped exactly like the battery --- if one wished to use it on a desktop one could pull the battery, insert the power supply and have less clutter on one's desk
- excellent keyboard
- the GRiD OS and bundled / integrated apps were amazing for the time
- accessories stacked up and plugged together very neatly making for a nice desktop dock-like experience
The company was also an early pen computing innovator.
Other cameos:
- One flew in a Space Shuttle mission (first laptop in space)
- The Richmond, VA phone book's cover one year was of a soldier during the Gulf War I believe sihouetted against the sun w/ a GRiD laptop balanced on one knee
- one used to be in the ``football'' attache case which the President's nuclear weapon launch code system was kept in.
William