To contextualize the "so hot" reference, that was from an actual full page IBM ad:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46581424

DonHopkins 4 months ago | parent | context | favorite | on: The struggle of resizing windows on macOS Tahoe

>"The products suck! There's no sex in them anymore!"

Enter "Lickable Pixels" -- the phrase that stuck to describe the Aqua era.

Introducing Mac OS X's Aqua interface, Jobs said at Macworld in January 2000: "We made the buttons on the screen look so good you'll want to lick them."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqua_(user_interface)

Then there was the red hot irresistibly sexy and well designed IBM Thinkpad TrackPoint -AKA- Keyboard Clitoris -AKA- Joy Button, and IBM's explicitly lascivious "So Hot, We Had To Make It Red" ad.

https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/hodidb/so_hot_we_...

Ted Selker, the inventor of the TrackPoint, told me the story of how that ad got written and refined by focus groups: He slyly suggested the slogan, and IBM's ad designers begrudgingly put it on the page in small text in the corner, below the photo and ad copy. Then they A/B tested it with the text a little bigger, then a bit bolder, then even higher, and it finally worked its way up to the top of the page in BIG HUGE BOLD TEXT!

More about Ted's work:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34425576

Ted Selker fondly reminds me of "Mr. Lossoff" the "Button Man" in "A Nero Wolfe Mystery” episode “The Mother Hunt”, where Archie drops in on "Mister Lossoff’s Distinguished Buttons” in the garment district of New York:

https://youtu.be/h-QgWOSVKm4?t=724

He's totally THAT enthusiastic, a distinguished expert fiendishly obsessed with buttons! He even carries around a big bag of replacement Joy Buttons that he hands out for free like candy to anyone who’s worn theirs out.

I know this from personal experience: Ted and his wife Ellen once ran into me working on my Thinkpad at some coffee shop in Mountain View, and Ted noticed my worn out Joy Button. He excused himself to run out to his car to fetch his Button Bag, while Ellen smiled at me and rolled her eyes up into her head and shrugged, and we hung out and talked until he got back. I really appreciated a nice new crisp one with fresh bumpy texture, because mine was totally worn down, and it made his day to get rid of a few. (I imagine their house has hoards of boxes and piles of bags full of them!)

The common thread: design that makes you come. Back for more, that is. Buttons to lick till they click. Nubs to rub till they're bald. Products you touched obsessively until they're worn smooth. Tahoe gives us clownish corners we can't even grab. Apple dropped the ball -- and frankly, it's a kick in the nuts.

----

Here's what Ted wrote about some of the other people involved with the Thinkpad and Trackpoint design, and his canine envy:

Ted> Actually i called it a joy nub (smaller than a joystick) and even made many vibrating joy nubs....

in fact i was flattered when Richard sapper decided to change it from a keyboard color to red and IBM came up with the marketing slogan "so hot we had to make it red"

In fact Bob Olyha and Joe Rutledge worked really hard to put a 5 position gesture recognizer in the firmware of the trackpoints that are sold today (N,S,E, W and press)! (three d gestures were a fun challenge)

Joe Rutledge, Barton Smith and Bob Olyha are the best contacts for software questions.

The keyboards can be purchased easily

I made many prototypes, many with force feedback and two handed scenarios, etc. the russian tea mouse was a special one which allowed a velcro on trackpoint the size of a thumb, nested in a mouse shaped object and a cover allowing for gross control from any movement of a large part of the body.

The scollmouse (a poormans trackpoint scroller) was sold as a product that outperformed wheels for pointing (not a real strain gauge based pointing stick)

Don> Didn't your dad help you design the material you made the original trackpoint out of?

Ted> He did. (chlorinated butyl rubber)

Don> Has airport security ever gotten suspicious of you carrying around a big sack of trackpoint nubs?

Ted> i am jealous of the 6 nipples dogs have aren't you.

Don> The virtual laptop sounds like a program that came with my old 90 mhz Thinkpad -- I think Ted Selker worked on it. It had a photorealistic virtual view of the laptop that you could turn around in different directions to see the various parts labeled, and it was integrated with documentation and status displays and control panels related to all the gadgets and interface plugs. For example, you could bring up the volume control panel by clicking on the speaker, and stuff like that!

Ted> YEP, i tried to get rid of the book and irq setting the lpt1 grids of buttons.... i can't find our "best ideas" here is an early crappy image or two....

here is how we deployed it (still has problems)

also i came up with an idea called wrapping paper instructions which never got deployed: no text

it showed how to open the laptop, put in the battery, use the ultrabay, remove the disk, open the keyboard to get to stuff, turn on the computer, plug in the computer, and use the notebook latches.