Sometimes a revolutionary idea begins with a pair of scissors in a hotel room.
In September 1989, Apple engineer Jonathan Krakower was sitting in a New York hotel, disappointed by the early reviews of the new Macintosh Portable.
At the time, most PC laptops had their keyboards positioned at the front. MS-DOS still dominated the PC market, and even with the arrival of Windows 3.0 in May 1990, graphical interfaces were not yet universally adopted. Many laptops therefore relied primarily on keyboard commands, while others used external mice or side-mounted trackballs.
But the Macintosh relied on a graphical interface, making a convenient pointing device essential. Krakower believed there had to be a better way.
A Simple but Radical Idea
He began cutting pictures from an Apple brochure and rearranging the components. Then came a surprisingly simple idea: what if the keyboard moved all the way back towards the screen?
Suddenly, there was room for a larger, centrally positioned trackball and comfortable palm rests on either side. The trackball would also be equally accessible to left- and right-handed users.
Working largely in secret, Krakower built a functional prototype during the Christmas holidays of 1989 and organized after-hours tests with 45 Apple employees.
His managers considered the design too radical.
But Robert Brunner, Apple’s head of industrial design, immediately recognized its potential.
Together with designer Gavin Ivester, the concept was refined into a practical, elegant design.
A Billion-Dollar Success
In October 1991, Apple introduced the PowerBook 100, 140 and 170.
The new machines were an extraordinary success. Apple sold approximately 100,000 PowerBooks within four months and generated more than $1 billion in PowerBook sales during the first year.
Their innovative, user-friendly design helped establish Apple as a major player in the rapidly growing laptop market.
Other manufacturers continued experimenting with pointing devices, including IBM’s famous red TrackPoint, introduced in 1992. But Apple’s keyboard arrangement helped establish a lasting industry standard.
A Design That Never Really Changed
In 1994, Apple introduced a built-in trackpad with the PowerBook 500 series, replacing the mechanical trackball. Yet the fundamental layout remained unchanged.
Look at almost any laptop today. The keyboard still sits towards the screen, with palm rests and a trackpad in front.
More than three decades later, we’re still using essentially the same arrangement.
Great design doesn’t always begin in a design studio. Sometimes it starts with an engineer, a pair of scissors and the courage to challenge convention.
Based in part on David Pogue, Apple: The First 50 Years (2026), pp. 241–243.
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