What is this, a PC joystick for ANTS?

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Suncom Technologies tried to create a compelling alternative for the ordinary computer mouse with its ICONtroller joystick. Problem is, it wasn't really any good.
Sources:
IBM PC photo: www.flickr.com/photos/phreaki...
"Windows 3.0", The Computer Chronicles, 1990.
Microsoft mouse photo: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
Kensington trackball next to keyboard photo: www.flickr.com/photos/o_o/825...
Kensington trackball photo: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
"Of mice and mobile computers: pointing devices for close quarters," InfoWorld, April 20, 1992.
Siemens 486 laptop photo: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
"Portable pointing devices," PC Magazine, October 15, 1991.
Suncom ICONtroller Laptop photos: www.ebay.com/itm/393790301499
"That's Entertainment!", Popular Science, November 1987.
"Traveling Trackballs," PC Magazine, March 30, 1993.
"Controller Provides Mouse and Trackball Functions to Laptops," InfoWorld, December 17, 1990.
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Intro music by BoxCat Games (freemusicarchive.org/music/Bo....

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7 июн 2024

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Комментарии : 141

@Desmaad 4 месяца назад

0:34 That's not Windows; that's Digital Research's GEM, specifically the two-pane version they were forced to create after losing a lawsuit from Apple. The original version still carried on on Atari's TOS (which is effectively CP/M-68K with GEM 1.0).

@compaqdeskpro5770 3 месяца назад

No wonder he offed himself, the whole industry pillaged what he created.

@Desmaad 2 месяца назад

@@compaqdeskpro5770 He was actually beaten to death outside a biker bar.

@hololightful 4 месяца назад

Wish the video was a bit longer (I like your longer format content), but great as always. Yeah, $100 kinda seems outrageous, especially at $ buying power then...

@medes5597 4 месяца назад

They tried to push these as graphic design tools at one point towards the end of the 90s, and I always assumed that was why they had such a high price point. To see that they actually always had that price point even when they were aiming for everyday users. I can't imagine development costs were high enough to force that price??

@waterup380 4 месяца назад

Just has you enjoying the video it's over just like that

@mybigfatpolishlife 4 месяца назад

How much can you really talk about a pointing device

@Boogie_the_cat 4 месяца назад

Everyone likes longer format content, but the algorithm keeps pushing creators to keep videos under 8 minutes. It's stupid. RU-vid just wishes it was TikTok and TikTok makes me want to vomit acid all over my screen.

@Kyharra 4 месяца назад

@@Boogie_the_cat yea TikTok is a plague

@faenethlorhalien 4 месяца назад

Well, not for ants. As you showed, it was the precursor to the clit thumbstick that ibm laptops would have in the 90s, before trackpads were a thing.

@gelbespikmin3175 4 месяца назад

true

@Synthematix 4 месяца назад

Clit thumbstick, wow bet that was fiddly

@volvo09 4 месяца назад

Hahaha, I laughed the first time I heard that! You just reminded me of it again! 😂

@juanignacioaschura9437 4 месяца назад

Obligatory reference to strip 243 of the venerable webcomic "xkcd" ;)

@rager1969 4 месяца назад

It's insane that they were charging that much, given that the tech was less sophisticated/costly than mouse/trackball (pots vs optical encoder wheels) and they were selling joysticks that cost a fraction of that. Had they priced it better, maybe it would've been more compelling.

@thedave7760 4 месяца назад

Optical encoders didn't turn up in mice till the mid 90's.

@digitalshackonthelane 4 месяца назад

I like this - was surprised you did not point out the logical progression of their demise with the adoption of the min KB integrated pointer by IBM and Toshiba at the time (for laptops) - Great video anyhow!

@Minty1337 4 месяца назад

reminds me of the IBM trackpoint, but bigger, with better ergonomics, this would have a chance

@slembcke 4 месяца назад

Moly! Maybe I'm forgetting what comparable peripherals were back in the day, but $100 seems awfully steep. As an aside people always say "Ah I remember those giant Kensignton Trackballs..." Good news! They still make that same model today, and I own several of them! (They are also ~$100 though, hehe) They are great if you have wrist issues with regular mice. Worth every delicious penny when I can make it through a whole day of work without my wrists screaming. :)

@Boogie_the_cat 4 месяца назад

Back in the day you could get a Gravis gamepad for $50 max. $100 for this troglodyte is absurd. $100 for a trackball? Geez, I've been thinking about more ergonomic mouse like options (after hitting 40+), but daaaaamn. Good lawdy that's some munny. I once paid $70 for a mouse, but it had a million buttons and a Hero sensor and was wireless and rechargeable and has programmable macro buttons. You'd think a trackball would cost less. My wrist doesn't hurt that much. Yet.

@jcfawerd 4 месяца назад

@@Boogie_the_catthere are cheap ones made by Logitech, check out m575

@maighstir3003 4 месяца назад

The Kensington Expert Mouse is great, but it is a personal preference. I switched from a normal mouse a few years ago when I got issues with my arm, though I decided to get a used one on Ebay rather than pay full price for a new one. I'm no worse gaming with the trackball than I was with a mouse, though I was never very good at reacting both quickly and accurately.

@handlesarefeckinstupid 4 месяца назад

Yeah I use a trackball for cad/cam. Although the thing I use cost about 300 quid and has a million shortcut buttons.

@-DeScruff 4 месяца назад

I have one of these for the C64! Its kinda handy for navigating menus of things like the SD2IEC since the C64 doesn't have typical cursor keys, and a handful of software (specially anything modern) uses the joystick as cursor keys.

@CommodoreFan64 4 месяца назад

As someone who owned the commodore mouse for my C128 to use wtih GEOS, when I saw this hanging on the shelf at my local computer store as a kid I always gave it a good laugh because of the price, and how tiny it was 😅

@SlyPearTree 4 месяца назад

My Commodore mouse stopped working after it was not sold anymore so I got that Joystick thing to replace it for when I used GEOS.

@Markimark151 4 месяца назад

The Zoolander joke title, also don’t these ants go crawl in that joystick! I had ants crawled in the Wii controller!

@AaronOfMpls 4 месяца назад

I remember this from LGR's Oddware video about it. _Definitely_ a niche device at best. And once laptops started including their own trackballs and (eventually) trackpads... 🙂 Nicely done as ever -- even if a bit short.

@vjcodec 4 месяца назад

I love watching the old computer chronicles episode. The one about midi is amazing.

@ObiWanBillKenobi 4 месяца назад

4:26 I obtained a couple of those Appoint Thumbelina units (under a different name). I forced myself to push through about 2 minutes of using one, then told myself it was okay to dislike it since I had given it a chance. Being a Star Trek fan, I love touchscreens, and even on most days, I prefer a mouse over a touchscreen.

@12Mantis 4 месяца назад

Huh, I think I have one of their products (look at the 4:30 mark), that Appoint Thumbellna. Used it on my first laptop, a Thinkpad 365e (I think), wasn't too bad actually......the small size wasn't that much of a problem once you got it situated just right and got used to the controls. If I remember correctly that square button with the green LED next to it was like a right-click mouse button that stayed "on" until you clicked it again, it was for those situations when you needed to move something across the screen or highlight some text or such.

@kaitlyn__L 4 месяца назад

I believe Appoint was a competitor to Suncom, they also made that pen-mouse thing

@Desmaad 4 месяца назад

0:51 That's probably PC-GEOS, made by the same company that made GEOS for the Commodore 64 and Apple II. It was later branded as Geoworks.

@janchristianursuaaguilar7434 4 месяца назад

1 grit that cursed mouse joystick yikes

@unstablemexican88 4 месяца назад

dankpods reference

@kami-kun_va 3 месяца назад

I know

@laughingvampire7555 2 месяца назад

trackballs are amazing, I tried them out of curiosity and became a collector.

@kFY514 4 месяца назад

It's a bit ironic that you showed it working with a ThinkPad that have a TrackPoint, which is an even smaller mouse replacement joystick ;) although probably a better one - missed opportunity for a comparison perhaps?

@lauram5905 4 месяца назад

I wouldn't be surprised if it was based on something like it (but probably better quality) that was used in the medical or science fields, or perhaps video composition, there's all kinds of odd analog interactive devices that were invented before ergonomics were really nailed down

@EhrenLoudermilk 4 месяца назад

What a time capsule. People were stoked when they bought this. Thank about that. Also, youre channel is awesome. Niche as all get out.

@SatoshiMatrix1 4 месяца назад

Suncom made a lot of janky peripherals. Outside the PC market, one notably silly thing they made was the Suncom **Mother Ship Control Enhancer Joystick** for the NES. This was a joystick controller with a hollow innard where the player would place inside an actual Nintendo made NES controller, and then the joystick parts would make physical contact with the existing NES dpad and buttons. It meant pressing a button to press another button to finaly get your input. It was also stiff and unresponsive. You would always be better off taking the stock controller out of the thing and using it as-is. Like the ICONtroller in this video, the Mother Ship Control Enhancer Joystick was a solution in search of a problem. That could have been Suncom's slogan.

@RocketboyX 4 месяца назад

Suncom did make some top tier C64 joysticks.

@GuyManley 4 месяца назад

2:27 just described why every PC handheld without a track pad is a no go.

@youdontknowme5969 4 месяца назад

But I remember using a joystick in C64 GEOS 🤣 And I had a college roommate who swore by his trackball (Win 3.1 days) Yeah, traveling businessmen came to mind who still had laptops with no built-in pointing device. If they could somehow could've done even rudimentary variable speed/acceleration within the joystick (like how a pointing stick works in later laptops) (even just maybe 3 levels: slow, med & fast, the further to an edge it's pushed), likely would've been more tolerable to use (but that costs even more money 🤪). And made the buttons plastic over tactile keyswitches _like most mice_ LOL

@AddieDirectsTV 4 месяца назад

I still swear by a trackball

@lasskinn474 4 месяца назад

this is like a thing to sell to people who think the integrated joysticks in some 80s micros were cool and understandable.

@RocketboyX 4 месяца назад

@@AddieDirectsTV Trackballs are best.

@tonecapone8021 4 месяца назад

@@AddieDirectsTV Me too. I have one at home and at work. The IT guy at work came back to my computer to do something one day. He reached for the mouse, and when he realized it was a trackball he pulled his hand back like it was a turd or something. 🤣 He had me work the computer and told me what to do.

@thatzaliasguy Месяц назад

I still game on a fingertip trackball today! (Gameball)

@mdzura117 4 месяца назад

Wow, this would be a great accessibility device for people with disabilities who have limited or no hand use. I've seen other obscure, but actually innovative, input devices from he late 80s and 90s that people laughed at for just being a total flop. Although these devices might not have worked well for the general population back then, a person with a disability would appreciate it today. It's unfortunate everything is so standardized in our modern world. We're stifling innovation. Companies should bring back tech like this

@TommyAgramonSeth 4 месяца назад

That was my first thought, as an accessibility device it could help someone who's otherwise unable to use a regular mouse. But I just can't see it as a good mouse replacement for capable individuals. Even the IBM nub seems like a weird solution to me and I can only imagine using it with gloves when a regular trackpad wouldn't work.

@Otokichi786 4 месяца назад

I saw a photo of a handicapped computer user who was "getting it on" with the ICONtroller, according to his father.

@kaitlyn__L 4 месяца назад

@@TommyAgramonSethI know lots of people preferred the TrackPoint because it let them avoid moving their fingers from the home row. I could never get the hang of the acceleration though

@truectl 4 месяца назад

I had one of these that I used on a Compaq SLT 386. The mouse could be stored under the keyboard when not in use. I remember it working really bad. Over the years I've thought of this device but couldn't remember what it was... thanks for the video and providing a name for it.

@caseyrevoir 4 месяца назад

0:53 That's a very charming... Beer box?

@xcruckx 4 месяца назад

0:50 that lady is using a computer where the monitor is held up by a St Paulie's girl 12 pack.. 😆

@stevenmusante4681 3 месяца назад

I burst out laughing when you said it cost $99

@auroraparadox5235 4 месяца назад

It's baffeling some of the products that made it to market back then. Good quality video as always.

@padawanmage71 4 месяца назад

Reminds me of the presentation pointers that a tiny joustick and directional pad with stuff like Powerpoint slides.

@KayoMichiels 4 месяца назад

I wonder if you're interested in this piece of equipment: Microsoft Ballpoint Mouse You can see it in the 1990 Excel commercial in the elevator as that trackball on the side of the laptop.

@adamyeager 4 месяца назад

Awesome video... are we not going to talk about the case of St Paulie's Girl beer being used as monitor stand?

@SquishySenpai 4 месяца назад

I had one of these. Strapped it to my index finger and held it like you would a tiny phone and it worked really well that way. It broke after only a couple months though.

@AddieDirectsTV 4 месяца назад

This reminds me of the Thinkpad....uh.....well you know what I'm talking about lol. Just...bigger.

@whitestarlinegoodnight 4 месяца назад

It really does have to be at least... three times bigger than that.

@starsINSPACE 2 месяца назад

When things are small and cute, why does my brain think yummy? It's not a candy bar!

@burrfoottopknot 4 месяца назад

Starfighter controller was a huge personal leap for me from the default C= 64 joystick. Tactile and could take punishment without snapping

@HRJustinPlays 4 месяца назад

They should have called it ICON Troller since it was so easy to overshoot the Icons. lol

@CaryGordon3k 4 месяца назад

I am pretty sure Suncom also made these controllers for other platforms, as I recall my father had a very similar joystick controller velcro'd to the side of his Commodore 64 back in the day to control GeOS. I seem to remember it working pretty well, but, to be fair, I was young and never used a mouse or a trackball before to control a computer. Later on, when we migrated to out first IBM Compatible we ended up with a series of trackballs, as the desk we used was just too small to use a mouse.

@baconberries8097 4 месяца назад

I kinda wish those clip on trackballs were still a thing lol

@user-mz1nl1vk4t 4 месяца назад

Been a fan for 7 years of this channel

@Swenglish 4 месяца назад

This screams of accessibility tool marketed for general use in order to mass produce. Much like many seemingly useless home shopping products. Not so useless if you happen to need it. I could very easily picture one of these firmly attached to a wheelchair or hospital bed.

@chrismckay3868 4 месяца назад

0:01 Hey i have one of those, have had it for decades. I used I t with a 386 laptop lol. I seemed to remember liking it as i could cradle it in my fingers and use my thumb to move the stick, no desk required.

@dhpbear2 4 месяца назад

2:14 - That looks worse that the 'Puck' mice that Apple shipped with the first iMacs! That thing gave me *cramps* , itwassosmallll...!

@UltimatePerfection 4 месяца назад

I would love to have a joystick-like mouse, no /s here. But it would have to be more convenient to handle. And before you say it, yes I know I can just buy a regular joystick and map it to a mouse via joy2key or whatnot, but 1) I've was once banned from an online game because it detected joy2key running, thinking it was cheats, fortunately after explaining the situation I got unbanned, and 2) most joysticks don't have a rotary encoder, a.k.a. mouse wheel.

@DarkFiber23 4 месяца назад

It kind of reminds me of a larger IBM Trackpoint.

@mysticaxolotl8215 4 месяца назад

I find it really really odd that you chose to showcase the Toshiba T1200XE at 3:52, when I literally just got one of those yesterday

@Cee64E 4 месяца назад

I actually had one of these for my GEOS use on a Commodore 64. I thought it worked pretty good and it was super small and out of the way stuck to the C=64 case.

@IrisGalaxis 4 месяца назад

I'd hold it in the palm of my hand and use my thumb to move the joystick

@OldMan_PJ 4 месяца назад

There was a controller for the Atari 2600 that fit in the palm of your hand and could be controlled with your thumb, worked great for any game that didn't require precision.

@tonecapone8021 4 месяца назад

I had one of those, if we're thinking of the same one. Mine was an Amiga. (Not made by the computer company Amiga). It was black with little red stick. Red buttons on each side. That was THE controller to use on the game Decathlon. You had to move the stick left and right as fast as you can to run in the game. It was a tough little stick so flicking it back and forth quickly didn't break it. The stock Atari joysticks would get destroyed by that game.

@lerkzor 4 месяца назад

Did you ever repair that LS-120 drive from the new-old-stock PC you assembled a year ago?

@johnsparozich6839 4 месяца назад

I never used one but remember seeing it in stores

@MK-of7qw 4 месяца назад

5 year warranty? dang!

@azmifarhan1257 4 месяца назад

Well guess which pointing device still available to this day that is a spiritual (and technical) successor to the ICONtroller.. ..ThinkPad's TrackPoints 😅

@volvo09 4 месяца назад

Is the input proportional? (Like point stick in a laptop?) Or is it just an on off switch? I couldn't really tell from the footage.

@Shrek_Has_Covid19 4 месяца назад

it needs to be at least three times bigger

@kevinmckenna5682 4 месяца назад

I owned that ICONtrolller for C64. It was worthless for GEOS, which was better with a mouse, but after I cut off the adhesive tab and used it as a gaming joystick, it was great. Regular joysticks were too large and clicky, but the ICONtroller was small and quiet.

@gkcadadr Месяц назад

“icon troller” indeed

@dotapark 4 месяца назад

Honestly though, I want to move mouse cursor like remote controller in my bed if it’s possible.

@DCFatCat 4 месяца назад

Long live John c. Dvorak. The mouse is dead, it only took a few decades we got there

@CaptainFabulous84 4 месяца назад

Wow, I had a Slik Stik back in the day, it was pretty great. And GEOS??? Now that's a name I haven't heard in a LONG time!

@CharlesOttman 4 месяца назад

Trackpoint version 0.1

@MotownBatman 4 месяца назад

I want one! That would have been sweet on my 286

@TheFishamster 4 месяца назад

Love the title of the video.

@PipBoy3k 4 месяца назад

I bought one a month ago looking for a joystick for my Book 8088. Imagine my surprise when I found out it's actually a mouse. It's not bad but the click and hold functionality doesn't quite work. Click and drag is unusable.

@zagnut48219 4 месяца назад

The Commodore 128 had a similar accessory.

@Pedro8k 4 месяца назад

Thinkpad used a trackpoint on there laptops it was tiny red joystick like device on the keyboard and you had two buttons below the trackpad it worked ok

@liamcinq 4 месяца назад

Best. Video. Title. Ever.

@Ilix42 4 месяца назад

As a proud owner of a hive of honey pot ants, I approve of gaming peripherals for them.

@sirrebral 4 месяца назад

@4:42 TDNC, I see what you did there...

@Plexsusmax 4 месяца назад

It has to be at least 3 Times bigger than this!

@----.__ 4 месяца назад

Suncom only made one legendary level joystick. The Tac-2 Everything else was inferior by every measurable metric.

@aubreypwd 4 месяца назад

The title is steel!

@edgarwalk5637 4 месяца назад

If you made the stick shorter, removed the top button, and put the mouse buttons at the top, it would have been easier to use; more like the "nub" on IBM Lap Tops. Congratulations of 386K subsribers!

@Mizai 4 месяца назад

im happy a mouse just costs €4 these days

@Calm_of_Anubus 2 месяца назад

I had that thing for PC. It was cheap when I got one in around 1993ish. It was pretty crap for sure.

4 месяца назад

Nice to see GEM and GeoWorks.

@AlexJacksonSmith 4 месяца назад

Same as the IBM red nipple in behaviour and bigger...

@AnonymousFreakYT 4 месяца назад

Ironical, I think if they’d shrunk it further, it might have been more successful - make it TrackPoint size, operable by one finger, rather than like a joystick.

@wilsonj4705 4 месяца назад

To put that $100 price in perspective $100 in 1987 is equal to $275 in Dec 2023 dollars. Yeah, that thing was wildly overpriced. But to be fair a lot of similar devices at the time were as well.

@shiftto 4 месяца назад

maynot relate to the video, please man do a video about the Nokia N800, there are videos out there on internet but vid made by you more quality...

@Skyspace187 4 месяца назад

I knew a teacher at a school I went to that had one... I was a young avid techie, but I never understood why they used it because they had all the desk space for an appropriate mouse, I guess they were just trying to win the funs from students or something... Maybe to irritate the IT guys when they had troubles using it... 😂

@aleksandrbmelnikov 4 месяца назад

About as worthless as IBM ThinkPad's little eraser button called the TrackPoint. Only thing that could do right was play DooM.😁 Odd as it may seem, i like my large TouchPad mouse.

@lasskinn474 4 месяца назад

lots of people still buy certain new lenovos with it for the nipple mouse. also it sucks for doom. it's great for space flight sims tho. hp had them for a while on elitebooks.

@williamkennedy8133 4 месяца назад

I loved mine🤷‍♀

@bland9876 4 месяца назад

Anyone with a gaming handheld running windows knows joysticks are a bad way to controll a mouse most of the time.

@s980845 4 месяца назад

I hate these short videos. Please make longer ones on a "This Definitely Does Not Compute" 2nd channel if you dont want to mess up youtubes algorithm on the main channel.

@gmcnewlook 4 месяца назад

“Can you believe no one bought this?!”

@eformance 4 месяца назад

I find it amusing that you paired this up with a Thinkpad, which had the nubbin that behaved exactly the same 😁

@volvo09 2 месяца назад

No, the IBM nub stayed in place and was forced sensitive... You didn't move it farther to get the mouse to move faster.

@ralphmcmahan2139 4 месяца назад

videos like this just remind me how much useless junk I've bought over the years

@revand8011 3 месяца назад

Zoolander reference

@wiwingmargahayu6831 4 месяца назад

thosiba and super nintendo

@VazDraeStudios 4 месяца назад

I would have thought the product would have been pronounced like "Icon-troller" but also i dunno. Its a kinda dumb name for a dumb product either way.

@lucasrem 4 месяца назад

Why review crab, less video's please

@grumpywolfgaming 4 месяца назад

"it would only stop if you let go" Um, that's how a mouse works, you stop moving it and it stops. bad wording?

@realbuckwell 4 месяца назад

I cant stand this guys pacing it like he adds pauses between each word to pad out the video length..... Hi....... This..... Is....... Col..... In..... In.... To....Days..... Episode........