Sunday 27 June 2021

Chromebook (2011)

Introduced June 2011

Chromebooks are boring. Not as sleek as a tablet, not as powerful as a laptop. They’re for people who think a chicken korma might be a bit spicy and whose automobile of choice is an off-brand South-East Asian compact people carrier which just reliably gets them, their family and the dog from A to B with the minimum of fuss.

Based on Google’s Chrome OS - derived from the open source (but still largely Google) Chromium OS which is essentially a lightweight version of Linux – Chromebooks are inexpensive laptop-like devices designed for running web applications and a somewhat limited range of native apps, plus on many devices that ability to run applications designed for Android.

Currently most Chromebooks run on Intel-compatible processors, especially lower-end Celeron CPUs. Alternatively some variant of the ARM processor can be used, but these seem to be losing popularity. Like laptops there are a variety of configurations, mostly different screen sizes and CPUs. Internal storage is usually very limited as it is expected that most storage will be done in Google’s cloud. Similarly, there’s only limited functionality available without an internet connection.


HP Somethingorother
HP Somethingorother

Bland? Well, when you consider that people shell out thousands for high-end devices such as Macbooks but only use them for web browsing, they are certainly better value for money… in the same way that most expensive four-wheel drive SUVs never go further off the road than the supermarket car park. Since most Chromebooks tend to cost a few hundred pounds, they are usually a decent value proposition.

There are irritations, one of which being that Google got rid of the CAPS LOCK key to replace it with a search button. Printing can be difficult, but anyone who has tried to print from a smartphone will know that feeling too. You can’t run heavyweight native apps either because the hardware is generally underpowered and there is minimal storage space, but Chromebooks don’t pretend to be laptops. On the plus side they are inexpensive and have a real keyboard which makes them more suitable for real work than a tablet.

One key advantage is security – Windows devices are plagued with viruses and other malware, and so are Macs and even iOS and Android devices to a lesser extent. Although Chromebooks aren’t to security flaws, for all practical purposes they are much safer than using a traditional PC. On the other hand, software updates for Chromebook models have a much shorter lifespan than (say) a Windows PC, especially in early models which led to some hardware becoming obsolete in just a few years.


Chromebooks in a school environment
Chromebooks in a school environment


Did I mention they were boring? Well, really they are... but Chrome OS has a greater market share than the Mac (if you count a Chromebook as a laptop and not a door wedge), and in markets such as education they have a much larger share still. Is the idea a success? It’s a slow burn to be sure, but it does seem that Google and its partners have managed to come up with a viable alternative to Windows, Macs and tablets. Will they be around for another ten years? Given Google's habit of dropping products I would not bet on it..

Image credits:
BUF Simrishamn via Flickr - CC BY 2.0
TechnologyGuide TestLab via Flickr - CC BY 2.0



Sunday 20 June 2021

Frogger vs Centipede (1981)

Introduced June 1981

Early popular arcade games tended to be space-themed shoot-‘em-ups, which tended to appeal to male customers. However, games such as Pac-Man had a much broader audience and were especially popular with female players.

Fighting for a share of this market - and introduced roughly at the same time as each other – were Frogger (by Konami and Sega) and Atari’s Centipede. Both these games are regarded as classics of the golden age of arcade machines, but both had very different gameplay.

The origin story for Frogger is as cute as the game itself. Konami employee Akira Hashimoto was watching a frog trying to cross the road from his car, and was thinking about the difficulties the poor creature was having… which led to the inspiration for creating the game. Only the poor old frog in Frogger has an even tougher time.


Frogger machine from Seinfeld
Frogger machine from Seinfeld


In the game, the player starts at the bottom of the screen and tries to make it to the frogs’ homes at the top. To do this, the frog has to cross several lanes of traffic, and then cross a river on floating logs and diving turtles while avoiding alligators. There are many ways to die. Colourful graphics and a catchy soundtrack added to the appeal of the game, and it was a huge hit.

Centipede was another animal-themed game, but very different in execution. From a gameplay perspective, this was closer to a traditional shooter game, but here the adversaries were various bugs that you had to defend yourself against, primarily a long centipede which wound its way down the screen and which would split up if you shot it. Fleas, spiders and scorpions appeared with different behaviours, and the playfield was full of mushrooms which changed the course of the centipede when it hit.


Atari Centipede
Atari Centipede

Like Frogger, Centipede was a huge hit particularly with female players. Both games were widely ported – officially and unofficially – to the booming home computer and console markets. Indeed, both arcade machines shared many hardware parts with theses home machines – Frogger ran on a Zilog Z80 with the versatile AY-3-8910 sound chip and Centipede used the MOS Technology 6502 with Atari’s own POKEY sound chips which found their way into every Atari product of the time. This symmetry in hardware capabilities allowed this generation of video games to be a huge hit away from the arcades. Eventually powerful home computers and then consoles would end the golden age of arcades but by 1981 that was still some way off…

Image credits:
Arturo Pardavila III via Wikimedia Commons - CC BY 2.0
Matt M via Flickr – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0


Monday 14 June 2021

Texas Instruments TI-99/4A (1981)

Introduced June 1981

When Texas Instruments (often known as just “TI”) entered the home computer, it wasn’t a typical player. Most machines were made by startups, or companies that had specialised in calculators and electronic games. Instead, TI was a massive and long-established electronics manufacturer which could trace its origins back to the 1930s, and by 1981 it was the largest semiconductor company in the world.

Rivals such as Motorola were happy to supply all the important bits and bobs to go into these new microcomputers, but that was as far as it went. However, TI chose to leverage its considerable expertise in silicon to try to carve out a slice of the market for itself.

In 1979 TI launched the TI-99/4, based on the 16-bit Texas Instruments TMS9000 CPU. The TI-99/4 was expensive, had a horrible keyboard and was limited in expansion capabilities. Two years later, TI fixed many of these issues with the improved TI-99/4A with a massively improved keyboard, clever expansion system and – crucially – a price tag that was half that of the original. The TI-99/4A looked promising to consumers, and sales started to take off.

It was a good-looking machine, with plenty of brushed aluminium and black which was in line with the aesthetics of the time. It wasn’t cheap, but the 4A’s price ticket of $525 was at least competitive unlike the 4. The graphics and sound were amongst the best in its class, so initially at least it seemed like a compelling proposition.

Texas Instruments TI-99/4A
Texas Instruments TI-99/4A


At its heart was the TMS9000 CPU, a sophisticated beast that was essentially a 1970s Texas TI-990 minicomputer on a single chip. It should have allowed the 99/4A to be one of the most powerful microcomputers on the market, but instead it was a major source of problems. Because building a full 16-bit system would be prohibitively expensive, almost all the internal architecture is just 8-bit which negated the possible performance impact. More difficult still was the fact that the 16-bit CPU’s instruction set was twice as memory hungry as a contemporary 8-bit CPU.

To get around this, TI essentially created an 8-bit virtual machine using an intermediate language called GPL. This made coding more efficient and was a technically advanced technique, but the processing limitations of the hardware meant that all of this sophistication created a computer that was significantly slower than its 8-bit rivals, despite running with a 16-bit core.

No computer of the era was perfect though, so the TI-99/4A wasn’t disadvantaged as much as you might think. But there were other problems – and the main one was software. TI were reluctant to share information about the platform with independent developers, instead TI wanted to produce the bulk of the software and peripherals for the 99/4A themselves – and thus profit from them. In truth, the TI-99/4A was probably better than most offerings but it was much weaker than the likes of the venerable Apple II or the upstart Commodore VIC-20.

But there was trouble brewing, and it was the Commodore VIC-20 which would deliver it in a giant tankard with a single raised finger painted on the side. Commodore’s boss – the legendary Jack Tramielloathed TI for nearly bankrupting his business during the pocket calculator wars of the 1970s. The VIC-20 ran on the 8-bit 6502 CPU (built by Commodore subsidiary MOS Technology) which was cheap, fast and well understood by programmers. The VIC-20 wasn’t as sophisticated as the TI-99/4A, but it was about half the price… at first.

Tramiel dropped the price of the VIC-20, TI followed suit. A price war emerged with both Commodore and TI dropping the prices until both units were shipping at less than $100. TI was haemorrhaging cash at this price point, but sales were good and it thought it could make the money back on software and peripherals. It couldn’t. TI started to lose hundreds of millions of dollars in this price war, driving the whole corporation into a sea of red ink. Even cost-cutting in production couldn’t turn it around – late 99/4As swapping to a cheaper beige case rather than the snazzy aluminium-and-steel one.


Late model fully-expanded TI-99/4A
Late model fully-expanded TI-99/4A

TI couldn’t sustain these losses, and in late 1983 it announced that the TI-99/4A would be discontinued. Production ended in the spring on 1984 and TI cancelled the interesting TI-99/2 and TI-99/8 systems that it was working on. Instead TI switched its efforts to 8088-based PCs running DOS, machines that were better than the IBM PC but weren’t IBM PC-compatible. In retrospect this was not a winning market strategy either. On and off TI stuck with the PC business, coming up with the TravelMate line of laptops which were quite successful, but TI sold their PC business to Acer in 1997.

Ultimately TI went back to concentrating on making the components that make the world go around apart from one consumer product – calculators. Yes, the product that so ired Jack Tramiel is still a profitable line for TI and outlasted the Company that dared to challenge it.

Image credits:
Max Mustermann via Wikimedia Commons – CC BY-SA 2.0
Leigh Anthony Dehaney via Flickr – CC BY-NC 2.0