My new Think Retro column for Macworld is live, all about the box – yes, the box – one of my Newton MessagePad came in.

For a child of the ’80s like me, that style of photography—moody, low-lit, with shafts of light picking out form and texture—is still desperately exciting. And even as a kid, I was excited about the idea of working, of business, of being productive, so the kind of language and lifestyle you see in the pictures was terribly beguiling. (I’d like to blame the ’80s for this too, with its emphasis on self-improvement and free market economies, but maybe I was just a weird kid.)

Maybe everyone knows about the historical context in which packaging took on a marketing role, but I didn’t when I researched it for an essay when I was at university, and it still fascinates me today. macworld.com/article/2851994