Alternative: try not buying Apple next time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_Compass
>Development began in 1979, and the main buyer was the U.S. government. NASA used it on the Space Shuttle during the early 1980s, as it was powerful, lightweight, and compact. The military Special Forces also purchased the machine, as it could be used by paratroopers in combat.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3527036
>Man in a Briefcase: The Social Construction of the Laptop Computer and the Emergence of a Type Form
>Abstract
>Dominant design discourse of the late 1970s and early 1980s presented the introduction of the laptop computer as the result of 'inevitable' progress in a variety of disparate technologies, pulled together to create an unprecedented, revolutionary technological product. While the laptop was a revolutionary product, such a narrative works to dismiss a series of products which predated the laptop but which had much the same aim, and to deny a social drive for such products, which had been in evidence for a number of years before the technology to achieve them was available. This article shows that the social drive for the development of portable computing came in part from the 'macho mystique' of concealed technology that was a substantial motif in popular culture at that time. Using corporate promotional material from the National Archive for the History of Computing at the University of Manchester, and interviews with some of the designers and engineers involved in the creation of early portable computers, this work explores the development of the first real laptop computer, the 'GRiD Compass', in the context of its contemporaries. The consequent trajectory of laptop computer design is then traced to show how it has become a product which has a mixture of associated meanings to a wide range of consumers. In this way, the work explores the role of consumption in the development of digital technology.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/nasas-original-laptop-the-grid-com...
>NASA’s Original Laptop: The GRiD Compass Rugged and well designed, the first clamshell laptop flew on the space shuttle
https://web.archive.org/web/20080625004757/http://www.netmag...
>GRiDs In Space
https://groups.google.com/g/ba.market.computers/c/w5KVg1Igdt...
>GRiD Compass laptops, peripherals, and software
https://medium.com/l-a-t-o/invece-di-guardare-avanti-prova-a...
>[translated:] The Grid Compass was made of black lacquered magnesium alloy.
>Among its most remembered features, there is the fact that the paint went away after a while, due to the weight and dimensions that did not allow it to be too delicate with its transport. And so the dull black splintered, revealing the shiny metal beneath.
>Grid Compass - Bill Moggridge Design
>The Grid Compass was a status symbol, the flag of that tribe of people who wanted to show the world that they can never really disconnect from work.
>Owning it was cool.
>But even cooler was having chipped it, because it was the unmistakable sign that one not only possessed that thing, but actually used it.
The GRiD was so well built, and they were so popular with the military, that rumor was totally believable.
This has some stories about spooky GRiD users, like Admiral John Poindexter, who was a bit of a hacker:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQgoAQq7bP4
>Pioneering the Laptop: Engineering the GRiD compass
>Introduced in 1982, the GRiD Compass 1100 was likely the first commercial computer created in a laptop format and one of the first truly portable machines. With its rugged magnesium clamshell case (the screen folds flat over the keyboard), switching power supply, electro-luminescent display, non-volatile bubble memory, and built-in modem, the hardware design incorporated many features that we take for granted today. Software innovations included a graphical operating system, an integrated productivity suite including word processor, spreadsheet, graphics and e-mail. GRiD Systems Corporation, founded in 1979 by John Ellenby and his co-founders Glenn Edens and David Paulsen, pioneered many portable devices including the laptop, pen-based and tablet PC form factors.
>Key members of the original GRiD engineering team -- Glenn Edens, Carol Hankins, Craig Mathias and Dave Paulsen -- share engineering stories from the Wild West of the laptop computer. Moderated by New York Times journalist John Markoff.
(At 32:37 they mention an external 5 1/4" floppy disk peripheral that was returned for service with a bullet hole, and the "Scrubbing Bubbles" software they wrote for the government to erase the bubble memory in case of emergency.)