As the world once more turns its attention to Apple—praising it for finally adding the fingerprint scanning that Alexander Graham Bell shortsightedly left off his “telephone,” if you can even call it that—Fast Company has compiled an accompanying oral history on the company’s design, so at last you can read a discussion of Apple products on the Internet. But it does have one unexpected insight concerning The Simpsons, and therefore actually piques our interest: According to Scott Forstall, former senior vice president of iOS software, you can credit the the iPhone’s keyboard to a gag from the sixth-season episode, “Lisa On Ice.” (No, not “Monster Island is actually a peninsula.” That has to do with Apple Maps.)
As Forstall recalls, “In the hallways [at Apple] and while we were talking about the keyboard, you would always hear the words ‘Eat Up Martha’”—a reference to a joke The Simpsons made about Apple’s ill-fated Newton, which Dolph uses unsuccessfully to take down the memo, “Beat Up Martin,” only to have it changed to something he didn’t mean at all. Apparently, as Apple’s employees walked around uttering the ominous warning of “Eat Up Martha” to each other, their fears ensured that they would “nail the keyboard,” and that the iPhone would never, ever automatically correct words you’ve inputted to something nonsensical and wrong. Anyway, it’s an interesting bit of trivia—and really, fair recompense, considering we’re pretty sure the Newton existed solely as a Simpsons joke in the first place. [via UPROXX]