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Comment by hexmiles | Hacker News Reader

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hexmiles·

It's fun seeing how the Game Boy was attempted to be used like a smartphone.

Today a lot of appliance use smartphone for user interaction in the same way this sewing machine used the Game Boy.

It makes me think the smartphone revolution was inevitable...

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As far as millenials go, it may be many peoples' first experience with a handheld computer. I remember being enraptured by all the silly peripherals for the GBC that turned it into more than a game console, like the camera or the printer. Particularly the camera, which was pretty terrible. It was easy to overlook the low quality of its pixelated monotone pictures simply because it was a digital camera that could fit in your pocket.

The printer almost fit in your pocket.

The camera was threated as a toy and several years later as an art device.

Before the smartphone revolution we had stuff like these, from 1989, the same year Game Boy was released,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Portfolio

An example among quite a few, like the Apple Newton, Palm Pilot, Nokia Communicator, Compaq iPaq, Sony P900, ...

I wish companies still did stuff like this.

It seems when a device gets popular enough, no matter what it is, people will try shoehorning it into anything they can, leading to hilarious results.

Like the gameboy fish radar. Or even the gas sedation add on for kids getting dental work done!!

https://www.destructoid.com/pedisedate-gassing-your-kids-one...

Now everything is an app, a bluetooth speaker, or a selfie stick. End of the era.

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