Today, any smartphone, the tablet or Apple laptop comes in a minimalist white box. Its decoration is quite austere: an image of a device that is in the box and hidden in the back of the text containing the necessary specifications and regulatory information. But it was not always! Let's look at the box in which Apple was packing his Newton MessagePad and learn how the company came to the modern packaging concept.
For the generation of the 80's, these shaded pictures in the style of Moody, with rays of light, accentuate the shape and texture of the device are still impressive. As a child, I really liked the idea of work, business and productivity, so the images that you see in the picture was very attractive to me, excited me (I would like to believe it's all about the spirit of the '80s, with their emphasis on self-improvement and the market economy, but maybe I was just being weird child).
Look, this guy draws a map showing her guidance... and sends it by fax Judy.
Fax has long been obsolete and practically disused technology, but it can still surprise. I bet if you show the fax student (or even school students), they consider it a curious thing, allowing the transfer of "physical" image from one to another fax. However, they can simply be hipsters, so that, in principle, it does not prove anything.
On all surfaces of the box are located calls, specially designed by marketers, for the sole purpose - to get you to buy MessagePad. Now it seems commonplace (and rest assured, this happened long before the MessagePad 120), but historically, the use of packaging for goods, it was an innovative and unusual.
Before packing of goods began to be used, you went to the store to buy, say, oats and the seller would have to sleep off your shovel into a paper bag of oats as much as you like. Times are changing, and now instead of having to visit dozens of specialty shops selling oats, you come into one large, which is represented on the shelves of different brands of oats, and can choose which of them buy. The need to have on hand the shopkeeper, the Council some oats choose disappeared (and not always he will advise what is good for you) and now, when you make the decision yourself, product packaging must convince you to give preference to one or the other brand.
Despite the fact that the PDA is the product of a rather far removed from the oats, Apple's, in fact, done with the MessagePad the same things. On the surface, the box is not much free space to hold all of what marketers want to tell you, so lifting the lid, you will see eight more reasons to buy, buy, buy.
And what is interesting in all these marketing promises - Apple points to the problems and challenges that will help solve the MessagePad, but most of them are true even now.
Leaving aside the fact that the use of cards in 2 and 4 MB of sounds a bit ridiculous and strange, the idea of working with spreadsheets on the go and use the GPS, is still popular. Or take at least a communication function, providing the ability to send sms-messages through a connected cell phone (!) - the function that appeared only in OS X Yosemite.
Of course, among them there are the Internet and email, working through Apple eWorld service.
There is even a prototype of Siri functionality. Yes, this is not the speech recognition (although Dragon Systems demonstrated an early version of the voice command system MessagePad 2000 in 1997), but you might ask how to make those or other things, the MessagePad can even perform some action to you.
However, in all this there is the irony and you will understand why, if you look at modern packaging of Apple's products.
The reason for this "homeliness" (and the lack of marketing promises) that the product is "sold" well before the user sees the box and open it. After all, before buying a product, you will read his reviews on niche sites, look at it in the store and talk with consultants Apple Store, or simply because you ordered it online, and packaging of the product simply does not have to do any work on it promotion. You are not buying iPads as oats.
All this was also true in the mid-90s, when the MessagePad. Imagine that the MessagePad is still lying on the shelves. Many of us have picked up a box to read all the slogans designed to convince you to choose MessagePad? Unlikely. Add to this the fact that sellers do not put products on the shelves with boxes, limited to a pair of demo samples and storing box somewhere under the counter. That's why all marketing calls on the box Newton MessagePad, ultimately meaningless, although such a package good to see today, in comparison to modern it has a certain charm and intriguing.
Well, the last small detail, which can be found inside the box, and on which I want to draw attention. You know, in our time, all lightly apply to all kinds of rules and license agreements by clicking "Accept", "Next", "Next". And remember, a counterpart of this was in the past?
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