In the midst of Fast Company’s oral history of design at Apple, one former Apple engineer mentioned that The Simpsons inspired the original iPhone’s team to make sure their new smartphone’s keyboard was really, really good. Back in 1994, The Simpsons had poked fun at the Apple Newton, a PDA that featured an incompetent handwriting recognition software. On the show, bullies Kearney and Dolph tried to write “Beat Up Martin†on the device, but it became “Eat Up Martha.â€Â Eat Up Martha became a mantra for everyone working on the new keyboard, a reminder that the text input needed to work exceptionally well. It’s yet more proof that classic Simpsons episodes really are controlling everything. (via UPROXX)
