i find it kinda funny how casual HP has been about how extremely important they were to the PC platform

they were the ones to really introduce sony's 3.5 floppy disk, they made the first consumer-grade optical mouse sensor, and yet you don't really hear them boast about this

hell at the time nobody fucking knew HP made the optical mouse sensor, and the mice just appeared on the market as if "yeah this has always been around", as if it wasn't groundbreaking technology

@EeveeEuphoria probably because it’s not as groundbreaking as literally inventing 3.5” floppies or optical mice

@EeveeEuphoria i mean HP also did sell off all the actually good parts of the business, so HP only makes crappy consumer garbage that sucks now

@charlotte yeah but, they *did* invent the optical mice, xerox might as well not have existed in this world and nothing would've meaningfully changed in that department

xerox didn't give a single flying fuck their devices weren't going to consumers at all, and they would never try to do that

the optical mouse design that was released for consumers only resembled xerox's design in passing glances lol

@EeveeEuphoria That's how I feel about the Wiimotes. The sensor technology was world shaping, and is basically the reason we have such small and yet incredibly accurate sensors in our mobile devices that require very little power to function

@EeveeEuphoria optical mice for pcs did exist but they had other limitations like the inability to use them on typical surfaces. the innovation was using a miniature raccamera sensor instead of two strips of photodiodes. which is raccommendable in their own right

@charlotte they also had limitations such as only being available for businesses and never ever being able to be put in the hands of consumers

therefore they might as well not have existed

@charlotte like, sure, there was that one attempt for the IBM PC, but nobody fuckin heard of it until it was dug up decades later