Word: plugs
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...actually looks a bit like a mouse, with its rounded corners, off-white color and thin wire tail. The size of a pack of cigarettes, it fits snugly into the palm of the hand. Slide it across a table and electric signals go down its 2-ft. tail. Plug that tail into a computer, and the mouse directs the movement of a pointer on a video screen. The result: a device that can bypass the thicket of codes, commands and complicated keyboards that have plagued users since the computer era began...
...that gap could be filled at any time. "I'd expect direct competition to Lisa before the end of the year," says Clive Smith of the Yankee group, a Boston-based consulting firm. Already one company, VisiCorp, has announced that it is developing a mouse system that will plug into an IBM PC and give it some of Lisa's capabilities at a lower price. Apple itself is working on a scaled-down version of Lisa called Mackintosh (a misspelling of the Mclntosh apple). Priced at about $2,000, it is expected to make its debut this summer...
Telephone makers plug into profits with an array of new products...
...phone as a utilitarian item and look at it as a fancy new entry on a shopping list. Local Bell System companies, as well as AT&T's brand-new baby, American Bell Inc., are beseeching customers to buy telephones instead of leasing them, and even to plug more of them into their homes. Department, specialty and discount stores are getting into the act too, stacking shiny new phones next to the portable TVs and toaster ovens...
...Even though I look very small, you will have noticed by now that my black-and-white image is sharp and clear whether you are using batteries or the plug-in adapter provided with the set. A number of small-screen TVs are now on the market, but none can match Watchman's remarkable compactness. The ⅝%-in.-thick picture tube achieves its thinness through a significant technological twist. Instead of beaming electrons from some distance behind the tube face, as do conventional sets, Watchman's emitting gun rests alongside the tube and shoots the electrons across...