It Helped Fix iPhone Keyboards
Today's world is rife with mistakes, in large part because everyone types with chonky, stubby fingers on tiny little keyboards. But rather than the relative simplicity of a multitouch keyboard like we have now, it was considerably more difficult to operate years ago with physical keyboards that required individual key pressing. And it appears that The Simpsons is to blame.
All mobile devices before the iPhone had physical keyboards, since multitouch devices and virtual keyboards were a complete failure. The iPhone was anticipated to follow suit. Why? Apple's Newton. The typing was terrible because it was an early effort at a device without a real keyboard. The bully Dolph steals a message from Kearney on his Newton in a 1994 episode of The Simpsons, instructing them to beat up Martin. It is instead noted as "eat up Martha." Kearney responds by throwing the Newton at Martin.
The iPhone design team was motivated by this extremely basic joke. As they worked on the new keyboard, they reportedly cracked the joke "eat up Martha" all the time at the office. They worked on the concept until they had fixed the potential "eat up Martha" issue and completely transformed mobile typing.
