Infocom (or Adams) clairvoyance

[Richard Bos]

Either Douglas Adams or someone at Infocom was clairvoyant...

In 1987, Bureaucracy included a portable computer called a Boysenberry.

You'd think this was a riff on the Blackberry, right? Wrong. The first
Blackberry was sold over a decade later.
So, it's a riff on Apple, right? Well, probably partly right... except
that the first _portable_ Apple was sold two years after Bureaucracy!

So... clairvoyance?

(Also, it's produced by Deep Thought, a name that would one year later
be associated with IBM - but that was a direct reference to Adams' work
itself, so that one goes the other way.)

Richard

[John W Kennedy]

Post by Richard Bos
Either Douglas Adams or someone at Infocom was clairvoyant...
In 1987, Bureaucracy included a portable computer called a Boysenberry.
You'd think this was a riff on the Blackberry, right? Wrong. The first
Blackberry was sold over a decade later.
So, it's a riff on Apple, right? Well, probably partly right... except
that the first _portable_ Apple was sold two years after Bureaucracy!
So... clairvoyance?
(Also, it's produced by Deep Thought, a name that would one year later
be associated with IBM - but that was a direct reference to Adams' work
itself, so that one goes the other way.)

Apricot was a major British brand, and Apricot had a portable in 1984.

[rpresser]

Post by John W Kennedy

Post by Richard Bos
Either Douglas Adams or someone at Infocom was clairvoyant...
In 1987, Bureaucracy included a portable computer called a
Boysenberry. You'd think this was a riff on the Blackberry, right?
Wrong. The first Blackberry was sold over a decade later.
So, it's a riff on Apple, right? Well, probably partly right...
except that the first _portable_ Apple was sold two years after
Bureaucracy!
So... clairvoyance?
(Also, it's produced by Deep Thought, a name that would one year
later be associated with IBM - but that was a direct reference to
Adams' work itself, so that one goes the other way.)

Apricot was a major British brand, and Apricot had a portable in 1984.

And HHGTTG was made available for the Apricot line (which ran a variant
of MS-DOS) in 1985. An article on HHGTTG in "Compute Magazine" June 1985
issue says "Versions for the Apricot and Epson QX-10 are forthcoming."

http://archive.org/stream/1985-06-compute-magazine/Compute_Issue_061_1985_Jun_djvu.txt

So maybe Adams was directly aware of Apricot for this reason, in
addition to it being a popular British brand?

Or maybe fruit is just popular.

[Andrew Plotkin]

Post by rpresser
Or maybe fruit is just popular.

_Bloom County_ was doing the "Banana Jr" gag as early as '84.

--Z

[Richard Bos]

Post by rpresser

Post by John W Kennedy

Post by Richard Bos
So, it's a riff on Apple, right? Well, probably partly right...
except that the first _portable_ Apple was sold two years after
Bureaucracy!

Apricot was a major British brand, and Apricot had a portable in 1984.

And HHGTTG was made available for the Apricot line (which ran a variant
of MS-DOS) in 1985. An article on HHGTTG in "Compute Magazine" June 1985
issue says "Versions for the Apricot and Epson QX-10 are forthcoming."
http://archive.org/stream/1985-06-compute-magazine/Compute_Issue_061_1985_Jun_djvu.txt
So maybe Adams was directly aware of Apricot for this reason, in
addition to it being a popular British brand?
Or maybe fruit is just popular.

If you examine the Boysenberry, it clearly describes a parody of the
Apple logo. So clearly it was at least partly based on Apple. But
knowing how much of a tech lover Adams was, he almost certainly knew and
possibly even owned an Apricot Portable, so that may have been another
influence.

Richard

[Peter Pears]

Post by Richard Bos
So clearly it was at least partly based on Apple.

I'd go easy on the "clearly"s because everything is "clear" with hindsight, and even "clearer" with a lot of speculation. It's very likely to have been a hodge-podge fabrication, taking the symbols and brands which were at the front of the designer's mind (be he Adams or Meretzky). For all we know, someone playing Bureaucracy thought "Blackberry" would be a good name for a phone, so he went out and created it.

Again, sure, it might well have been partly based on Apple. It was a visible brand with a well-defined logo. But that's all there is to it; no clairvoyance, just the march of technology and a coincidence. After all, it's not like Apple have the only portable systems in the world; if he had predicted the first PDA, then THAT might be grounds for saying he had inside information.