"[book] gave us the secret ... sealed enclosure created two separate acoustic environments ... one inside the speaker enclosure ... and one outside, where the microphones were" I would have thought that part of the design would have been self-evident? As a TRS-80 owner starting in 1979 I also morn the loss of the inventor/creator version of Radio Shack - hung out there often walking back from school and many started…
> the design would have been self-evident > it just "seems" obvious I really don't understand what these comments bring to this discussion, or any discussion. Evidently, you were not there, and a person who was is telling us the story. Your opinion that the past facts don't align with your expectations is not relevant.
If that's your opinion, then certainly your tertiary meta-comment adds even less value.
I think it's truly interesting and worth looking at when, post-hoc, something seems like it should have been obvious, but was not. This can include, among many things, over-saturation of micro-problems in a small domain or slice of the problem limiting "out of the box" thinking on the creation side of things, or misunderstanding of the history and motivations of the creators on my side of things. I'm perfectly willing to acknowledge it may be the latter - but one also must acknowledge that a sub-enclosure for the speaker, whether to enhance the performance of the driver or help isolate the microphones (though I could be over-estimating the benefit of this) "seems" obvious.
This does not detract from the story, which I like for many reasons, or the more important fact that a successful business was built, which takes a suite of skills and much fortitude.