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" Form or function? Old-school design or new-school innovation? As Halt and Catch Fire closes in on the end of its first season, the team at Cardiff Electric is running out of time in its quest to revolutionize the PC. In a few weeks, Cardiff Electric will reveal its prototype at COMDEX, the annual computer expo in Las Vegas. But the design still has a long way to go, and the company&amp;#039;s PC division is broke. The hardware team added an entire megabyte of ram for the expanded operating system that Cameron (Mackenzie Davis) demanded last week. And now the PC is slowing down, so much so that it no longer breaks the elusive Doherty threshold. This week the team is tasked with designing the PC&amp;#039;s case, which holds all of the computer&amp;#039;s guts. Joe (Lee Pace) brings in Simon (D.B. Woodside), a hotshot industrial designer who worked on the DeLorean. Simon&amp;#039;s sketches for a flip-top case are innovative and he promises that users will be magnetically drawn to the machine. Joe thinks it looks perfect and names the prototype &amp;quot;Contrail&amp;quot; after the exhaust that comes out of the back of an airplane. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s about soaring, leaving the competition in the dust,&amp;quot; he says. But Gordon (Scoot McNairy) is more enraged than inspired. The complicated design would require another hardware overhaul, and he would have to ditch the heat sink. &amp;quot;Joe, contrail is the dust,&amp;quot; Gordon says. &amp;quot;If we continue to put form ahead of function, we&amp;#039;re going to be the ones left behind with everyone laughing at us. No one gives a damn about what the computer looks like, as long as it works.&amp;quot; Gordon storms out of the meeting. Simon also quickly leaves Cardiff, annoyed that his work is being questioned. (We later learn that Simon has a personal history with Joe; they dated years ago.) Gordon complains to Donna (Kerry Bishe), who is on a business trip for Texas Instruments. &amp;quot;Because of the dimensions, the heat sink won&amp;#039;t fit,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;And half the design was metal paneling. The thing&amp;#039;s going to end up being a waffle iron [on your lap].&amp;quot; Donna, the smartest engineer on the show, is intrigued. &amp;quot;That could work, couldn&amp;#039;t it?&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;Let the exterior paneling pull heat off the board. It&amp;#039;s actually an interesting idea.&amp;quot; (Side note: Why hasn&amp;#039;t Cardiff tried to poach her from TI? This would be the best time, historically, as TI is about to leave the PC market after the disappointment of its TI-99/4A home computer model.) After losing Simon, Bosworth (Toby Huss) and Joe try to get their second choice, an old-school designer, to build a basic injection mold. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re betting on utility,&amp;quot; Joe says, through his teeth. &amp;quot;Your design is simple, it&amp;#039;s welcoming. It doesn&amp;#039;t intimidate. We want our machine to be friendly.&amp;quot; After making the men grovel to him at a strip club, the old-timer agrees to build it. On the way out he accuses Joe of being &amp;quot;queer,&amp;quot; a serious insult in the 1980s Dallas business world. Bosworth coldcocks the designer. The deal is off. Joe re-approaches Simon, saying that he moved to Silicon Prairie for the level playing field. This computer could be the most important machine to ever hit the market. &amp;quot;In the end it doesn&amp;#039;t matter what design we choose, because it&amp;#039;s what&amp;#039;s inside the machine that&amp;#039;s brilliant,&amp;quot; Joe says. Simon agrees to build it. (We also learn that Simon is dying, presumably of AIDS. Should we be concerned that Joe is HIV positive? Cameron too?) Halt and Catch Fire is not subtle with its messages. The future is cool, the past is bad. But the show does a great job at showing how painful it is to leave the old way of doing things behind. Gordon is having a complete mental breakdown while the rest of the characters are blazing forward. It&amp;#039;s hard to watch, but finally the show has the substance to go along with its style. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/tv/a10864/halt-and-catch-fire-episode-7-16987421/>