Before IPhone and Android Came Simon, the First Smartphone
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In the 1995 techno thriller, The Net, Sandra Bullock plays a software programmer who unwittingly uncovers a plot to gain access to the world’s most sensitive computers. The bad guy, played by Jeremy Northam, tries to kill Bullock literally and virtually—by stealing her identity. (For a hacker, Bullock’s character is remarkably dim; when she finally catches on to what’s happening, she whines: “Our whole lives are on the computer.”) Apple gets the customary product cameo as the movie imagines a world in which ordering pizza online or accessing a database from a laptop computer in a car is commonplace.