Why IBM's Amazing 'Sliding Keyboard' ThinkPad 701 Never Survived Past 1995 (fastcompany.com) 40
Fast Company's tech editor Harry McCracken (also harrymccSlashdot reader #1,641,347) writes:
As part of Fast Company's "1995 week", I wrote about IBM's ThinkPad 701, the famous model with an expanding "butterfly" keyboard [which could be stretched from 9.7-inches to 11.5 inches]. By putting full-sized keys in a subnotebook-sized laptop, it solved one of mobile computing's biggest problems.
IBM discontinued it before the end of the year, and neither it nor anyone else ever made anything similar again. And yet it remains amazing.
Check out this 1995 ad for the keyboard! The article calls the butterfly ThinkPad "one of the best things the technology industry has ever done with moving parts," and revisits 1995's race "to design a subnotebook-sized laptop with a desktop-sized keyboard." It's still comically thick, standing almost as tall as four MacBook Airs stacked on each other. That height is required to accommodate multiple technologies later rendered obsolete by technological progress, such as a dial-up fax/modem, an infrared port, two PCMCIA expansion card slots, and a bulky connector for an external docking station... Lifting the screen set off a system of concealed gears and levers that propelled the two sections of keyboard into position with balletic grace... A Businesweek article cited sales of 215,000 units and said it was 1995's best-selling PC laptop. Yet by the time that story appeared in February 1996, the 701 had been discontinued. IBM never made anything like it again. Neither did anyone else...
As portable computers became more popular, progress in display technology had made it possible for PC makers to use larger screens. Manufacturers were also getting better at fitting a laptop's necessary components into less space. These advances let them design a new generation of thin, light laptops that went beyond the limitations of subnotebooks. Once IBM could make a lightweight laptop with a wider screen, "the need for an expanding keyboard was no longer essential," says [butterfly ThinkPad engineer] George Karidis. "It would have just been a novelty."
The article notes a fan's open source guides for repairing butterfly Thinkpads at Project Butterfly, and all the fan-community videos about it on YouTube, "from an excellent documentary to people simply being entranced by it.
"As a thing of wonder, it continues to transcend its own obsolescence."
IBM discontinued it before the end of the year, and neither it nor anyone else ever made anything similar again. And yet it remains amazing.
Check out this 1995 ad for the keyboard! The article calls the butterfly ThinkPad "one of the best things the technology industry has ever done with moving parts," and revisits 1995's race "to design a subnotebook-sized laptop with a desktop-sized keyboard." It's still comically thick, standing almost as tall as four MacBook Airs stacked on each other. That height is required to accommodate multiple technologies later rendered obsolete by technological progress, such as a dial-up fax/modem, an infrared port, two PCMCIA expansion card slots, and a bulky connector for an external docking station... Lifting the screen set off a system of concealed gears and levers that propelled the two sections of keyboard into position with balletic grace... A Businesweek article cited sales of 215,000 units and said it was 1995's best-selling PC laptop. Yet by the time that story appeared in February 1996, the 701 had been discontinued. IBM never made anything like it again. Neither did anyone else...
As portable computers became more popular, progress in display technology had made it possible for PC makers to use larger screens. Manufacturers were also getting better at fitting a laptop's necessary components into less space. These advances let them design a new generation of thin, light laptops that went beyond the limitations of subnotebooks. Once IBM could make a lightweight laptop with a wider screen, "the need for an expanding keyboard was no longer essential," says [butterfly ThinkPad engineer] George Karidis. "It would have just been a novelty."
The article notes a fan's open source guides for repairing butterfly Thinkpads at Project Butterfly, and all the fan-community videos about it on YouTube, "from an excellent documentary to people simply being entranced by it.
"As a thing of wonder, it continues to transcend its own obsolescence."
Maybe... (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe there were only 215,000 people interested in buying one?
Seriously, I remember it when it came out, but to be honest it looked gimmicky, flimsy/delicate, and small screen laptops were on the wane, as larger, higher resolution displays were coming out.
The space/weight savings weren't that significant, and as a new IBM model in 1995, I suspect it was at least as expensive as its non-butterfly competitors.
The disadvantage of a bigger laptop (Score:3)
and small screen laptops were on the wane, as larger, higher resolution displays were coming out.
The disadvantage of a bigger laptop is that a bigger laptop is less convenient to use in a cramped space, such as on a bus commute to and from your day job. It's also less convenient to pack in a cramped space, such as your tiny personal locker at your day job. A 10.1" laptop fit in (say) a locker in the back of a Walmart Supercenter, and a 11.6" laptop did not. That's part of why I was so disappointed that manufacturers suddenly discontinued 10.1" laptops at the end of 2012 [slashdot.org]. I remember recommending that pe
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Bus riders. Walmart emplyees. Not IBMs target demographic.
Re:The disadvantage of a bigger laptop (Score:4, Insightful)
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That's part of why I was so disappointed that manufacturers suddenly discontinued 10.1" laptops at the end of 2012 [slashdot.org].
I also was stunned by the sudden, complete disappearance of the netbook, which I thought was an ideal combination of form, capability and price (they were cheap). I had kept on running on Linux for years.
Re: The disadvantage of a bigger laptop (Score:3)
Crostini was years late (Score:3)
The practical problem with Chromebooks at the time was that for several years, between the debut of Chromebooks in 2011 and widespread support for Crostini (a GNU/Linux virtual machine) in 2019, a Chromebook couldn't do anything other than browse the web without threatening to wipe all your data [slashdot.org] (because "OS verification is OFF") every time you turned it on. That isn't very conducive to offline use while (say) riding a bus. I had been using my netbook for lightweight hobby programming projects.
Re: The disadvantage of a bigger laptop (Score:2)
Netbooks were built because manufacturers believed the hype that (then) Zero-Cost Linux was an acceptable replacement for (then comparatively costly) windows licenses. It wasn't, and countless netbooks were returned by angry buyers that discovered Linux on a two core Atom CPU with 2 gigs of RAM sucked, it just plain sucked, and they couldn't use their familiar software.
MS stepped in and made low-end systems eligible for zero-cost Windows 7 licenses for certain devices that met very specific limits (screen s
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I also was stunned by the sudden, complete disappearance of the netbook, which I thought was an ideal combination of form, capability and price (they were cheap).
I owned an Acer Aspire. It was almost $300 with a single-core Atom and a 10 widescreen display. Some years later I bought the first new laptop in a bunch of years. It was $300 with a 2C2T AMD processor (Zen/Raven Ridge) and a 15" widescreen display.
Netbooks existed because people wanted a cheaper laptop, and they went away because the parts got cheaper and you could get a laptop with actually decent specs for a low price.
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That was the issue with the butterfly keyboard - fragile, added weight and thickness to accommodate the mechanism, and was rapidly overtaken by improving technology. Thinkpad keyboards were also really good in general anyway, so being smaller wasn't quite as bad as with lesser designs that make typing extremely difficult.
The advantages were just too small, and the rest of the machine was compromised to get the size down. It was arguably a bit before its time in that respect.
Phone operating system lockdown (Score:2)
That's why people make do with phones and tablets. And they're good enough.
I disagree that phones and tablets are both good enough and affordable.
On their own, phones and tablets are not good enough because they run phone operating systems. These trade off flexibility for reliability, in part because people expect a phone to be their primary way of reaching emergency services (1-1-2, 9-1-1, 9-9-9, etc.). Phone operating systems are locked down with strict W^X in such a way that makes them not very capable, for example, for lightweight programming projects. Change my mind.
One can c
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I recently went back to a full-size desktop keyboard thinking I would love it, but me - "WTF why do I have to push so GD hard just to type !!"
You have choices. There are desktop keyboards with a very broad range of pressure and keystroke specs, and then there are also mechanical keyboards with swappable keyswitches where you can choose your own specs. They come in both standard and low-profile, low-travel variants. Standard keyswitches seem to have total travel between 4mm and about 3mm, with actuation points anywhere from 2mm to 3mm, and the force varies a lot as well.
I am currently running outemu silent peach switches. I have two boards using s
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Re:Maybe... (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe there were only 215,000 people interested in buying one?
"A Businesweek article cited sales of 215,000 units and said it was 1995's best-selling PC laptop."
Probaby not. It'd be hugely unlikely to have the best-selling laptop that coincidentally consisted of a production run identical to the number of interested customers.
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The Thinkpad 701 was tiny, less than 10 inches wide, 640x480 LCD. Wikipedia says [wikipedia.org]:
The 701 was discontinued because the keyboard design was no longer a necessity after screen sizes increased.
I worked on those (Score:5, Interesting)
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They were assembled upside down, so any time you needed to replace or repair the keyboard mechanism you'd flip it over, take off the bottom, and then proceed to completely disassemble the unit until you arrived at the keyboard.
Sounds like Apple portables for the past ten or fifteen years.
And replacing the heater in a car. I swear, most ICE cars seem to be built around the heater matrix.
u b thick (Score:2)
>"And yet it remains amazing."
If you are OK a super-thick laptop, yes.
>"IBM never made anything like it again. Neither did anyone else..."
Probably because people didn't want super-thick laptops :) Adding a sliding mechanism like that and being rigid-enough to work would easily at least double the thickness of modern notebooks, while also adding significantly to the weight and cost. And the cherry on top would be reliability; it is yet another mechanical thing to fail.
I agree it is very cool.
(But it
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Probably because people didn't want super-thick laptops :) Adding a sliding mechanism like that and being rigid-enough to work would easily at least double the thickness of modern notebooks, while also adding significantly to the weight and cost. And the cherry on top would be reliability; it is yet another mechanical thing to fail.
That and I think one of the main reasons this existed was larger displays were more expensive relatively than they are today. So it was gimmicky solution to the problems of the day.
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In those days all laptops were thick....
I got one at the time, and put OS/2 Warp on it. Was pretty happy with the small and light form factor. Of course we all know how Microsoft double crossed IBM on OS/2, so I didn't end up using it as much as I had imagined.
Because the laptop was small, you needed to keep an external CDROM drive attached via a flimsy cable, at least that's what I vaguely remember. The cable didn't inspire confidence.
Most popular laptops in the market ended up having a built-in CD/DV
Re:u b thick (Score:5, Insightful)
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>"Nobody cared how thick laptops were in the 90s."
I lived the era, and the 80's where "laptop" also meant a TRS-80 model 100 and such. And people were amazed at the size and lightness of that. Several years later, guess what? The model 102:
"The Tandy 102, introduced in 1986 as a direct replacement for the Model 100, having the same software, keyboard, and screen, and a nearly identical, but thinner, form factor that weighed about one pound less than the Model 100."
So yeah, thinness was always a factor
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Size/weight was important but this laptop was perfectly acceptable and it was not size/weight that tanked it. Even if they made this option at zero change in thickness with respect to their standard product, I speculate it wouldn't be more successful. Reasons are 1) foldable things feel weird (see also the current resistance to foldable displays), and 2) it did not really solve the problem: if you enjoyed full size keyboard you'd still have to bring a real keyboard in your bag.
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I do agree people started to obsess on it more at that time, to the point of throwing away some of the useful function in the pursuit of "thinness". But the size/weight/dimensions were always important
Size and weight was, but Apple obsession broke the laptop market. Having been blessed with a bad back I've always been somewhat obsessed with weigh, much more so than many here. I remember arguing with people over specs who simply would not consider weight to be a specification. Buy you know what was lighter t
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But at the time, Apple's only audience was egotistical pretentious people with more money than brains.
Apple's audience has not changed.
You know I don't necessarily want a laptop (Score:3)
I've heard the framework laptops are great but they always seem to be out of stock whenever I'm in the market. Maybe I'll wait it out next time. I have a bad habit though waiting until the thing dies entirely though.
They were neat, but doomed (Score:5, Insightful)
The only reason the keyboard existed was because of the subnotebook laptop - people wanted small laptops because carrying around what passed for a laptop then was kind of back breaking.
Just view the Computer Chronicles videos and you'll see the evolution of portable computing. Big announcements were made for sub-10kg laptops (22lbs). Then sub 10lb laptops (under 5kg). The next target was 2kg or 4lbs and the belief was subnotebooks would be the ultimate in portability to get us under the vaunted 1kg (2.2lb) laptop. But subnotebooks had a problem - they were small, and small laptops had small keyboards. We were measuring keyboards like we are today - with 90% keys, then 80 and 75% keys (like we have 90% keyboards all the way down to 55% keyboards). Of course, typing on those smaller keys was a challenge.
IBM created the butterfly to have a sub 12" laptop but a full sized keyboard. It was cool, it was unique, but like all IBM laptops, it was also expensive. And while a very unique idea, it was also a mechanical thing and people didn't like mechanical things - see the evolution of pointing devices from mice that popped out the side to trackballs to nubs and touchpads.
And laptops were fragile things as well - the cost a lot of money and you didn't want to get that mechanism gummed up. (Indeed, a problem with the surviving units is the mechanism failed - brittle plastics plus all the movements means hinges break, plastics shatter, etc).
These days, laptops are much thinner (the laptops of the 90s were 2" or thicker - nowadays the "thick" laptops are 1" thick, while we're getting 1/2" or thinner on midrange laptops). And we don't worry about keyboard size as the average "good" screen is around 14" or so. Laptops just evolved to the point such things were no longer needed, and are remarkably cheap.
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>Big announcements were made for sub-10kg laptops (22lbs).
I had a backlit Macintosh Portable (actually, I still have it, but it needs recapping). In its carrying case, and with power supply and spare battery, it came to 26 pounds.
Which was the same weight as the desktop Macs of the time.
I actually hurt my shoulder lugging it through an airport once.
I think it was the powerbook 180 that replaced it on which I had a problem with airport security--they wanted to see a C: prompt. I think it was finally a m
more than meets the eye (Score:2)
It also transforms into a robot, and a VW Thing.
Mine still works (Score:2)
A few things hurt its adoption:
- Once 14" & 16" TFT screens became affordable there wasn't much point in making the keyboard fold. Folding 14" screens were still a few decades away.
- It came with Windows 3.11 installed WIndows 95 wasn't bootable off CD so if you wanted Windows 95, you had to install 20+ floppys through it's slow external floppy drive.
- Once Windows 95 was installed you had a TCP/IP stack and modem firmware that didn't always play together. Mine made at least one
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IBM experiments (Score:2)
IBM produced a few weird models around this time. I remember this one, and also the 755cdv that could have the back of the screen removed (taking out the backlight) and included straps to attach it to an overhead projector allowing you to show your screen to a meeting without buying a dafa projector which were only just coming into existence, and very very pricy... https://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:755CDV [thinkwiki.org]
Thinkpad 701C with a Framework brain transplant (Score:2)
The ThinkPad commercials were SO on point (Score:2)
I remember loving the IBM Think Pad commercials back then. Mainstream TV ads for laptops. Love it.
My fav was the one where they were at a lunch counter and talking about the laptop tracking for impact if dropped. Guy throws one on the floor: "That's not my laptop..." Other guy... "check please". Gold.