Apple Prototypes: 5 Products We Never Saw 169
Michael writes "For every Apple product we see on the shelves, there are dozens that never make it to production. Sometimes, these rare gems surface on the web for us to take a look at, and ponder what might have been. Scouring through the interweb, I've compiled this list of 5 Apple products that only the most hardcore of hardcore MacAddicts have ever stumbled across.
Surprisingly, some of these products, over 10 years old, are still being speculated about in one form or another to this day. Will we see new products based on these old prototypes? It's far more likely that anything resembling the devices listed below have been rebuilt from the ground up, but still, it's fun to look back on the products that didn't make it to the mass market."
PDA (Score:4, Interesting)
Apple PenLite (Score:5, Interesting)
Missing from the list... (Score:4, Interesting)
Swing for the fences (Score:3, Interesting)
Pippin (Score:5, Interesting)
Get with the program, Apple! (Score:2, Interesting)
Where and when did Apple go so wrong?
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CAPTCHA of the comment: reprieve
Now it can be told... (Score:5, Interesting)
Case in point: mid-'90s, I did a lot of 3D animation and multimedia production. One of my clients was DEC, the Digital Equipment Corporation. Some of the presentations I created for them were for products like the DEC Dove, a tablet/laptop that could use wireless to connect to other DEC Doves in a conference room (this was 1994, before wireless was a standard and about when tablet computing first appeared).
I was lent a prototype of the Dove (cost: $50,000, delivered by an armed guard) in order to digitize it and create a 3D model. The operating system was something akin to PalmOS, and the screen would automatically rotate from landscape to portrait mode when the screen was opened. I had only the one example, so I can't say how the wireless function worked, but it never crashed on me, which is a lot to say for a prototype.
There were other DEC projects, none of which got past the stage of painted foamcore models, like a network-attached storage appliance that was about the size of an abridged dictionary. Again, this was 1994, and I didn't see an equivalent product in the marketplace for another 7 or 8 years. That one was ahead of its time, since most of the networks I worked with back then were 10Base2, chugging along at 10Mbps. NAS at that speed would be all but useless for anything but small Word docs.
I could go on about what killed DEC, but I'd rather let DEC ex-employees tell that story.
k.
On Video Phones (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The Newton Telephone (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:PenLite (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:PenLite (Score:1, Interesting)
PenLite used a MacOS 7.1.x version of the Newton OS recog engine. "Rosetta" was on Mac OS long before any of the breathless assholes in the Mac Rumor community ever thought of it.
There was a flip-swivel screen idea for a PowerBook G3 Series companion to Wall Street named Hollywood, but beyond that, I can't go into specifics (even as AC). It never got prototyped.
In fact, there are more projects Apple's kept secret and cancelled than these Mac Rumors jerks have ever guessed at correctly. I wish those folks would just pass silently into the night, because their annoying guesses and speculation on upcoming Apple products are the main reason working there can be such a pain in the ass. Apple used to be pretty fun place to work, but everything in and out is monitored these days - precisely because a few attention-seekers like Jason O'Grady and "Nick DePlume" chose to go into the leak-amplifying business.
iPhone? (Score:4, Interesting)
Unfortunately, things really took off with the Palm Pilot... which dumped functionality for a form that was actually convenient and fit in a pocket. Sound familiar? I say unfortunately, because 3Com / Palm clearly hasn't had the legs to keep running with it. Now the pure PDA are has the Palm Pilot on the low end, MS's Pocket PC on the high end, and a gamut of random stuff like Psions in the middle. And it looks like the market is shrinking.
Personally, I've had many PDA's, and liked them all. They were replaced by a Treo, until the shoddy build quality dragged that phone into nothingness. Since the Treo, I've used a standard phone with a unlimited use network plan. Now when I need to make an appointment, I just go to calendar.yahoo.com. Text input with the phone pad is worse than with the Treo's excellent keyboard, but typing in appointments at my normal computer works perfectly.
I suspect that apple is working on something WRT the iPhone. It would make perfect sense for an iPhone to sync automatically with iCal. It could be more of an Apple Communicator or something like that, with phone functionality relegated the same status as text messaging, calendar functions, and purchasing music from iTunes.
There isn't a lot of room left in the space between a dedicated PDA [yahoo.com] and an ultralight computer [sonystyle.com]. Apple would need to go a different direction.
Magnetic Smart Fluids (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:This is why I like Apple (Score:4, Interesting)
I just love opening the lid, doing my work, and slamming it shut. When they drop in a new widget, it's solid. Sure you have to take it in for an occasional blown logic board... but you CAN take it in for a blown logic board. My Sony's would drop a component and it would be "oh well, sucks to be you." The only reason I had to replace my previous iBook was that I had marinated the thing in coffee. It was 3 years old and running like the day I, or rather work, bought it.
How many of you kill a three year old laptop and say "GOSHDAMNIT!!!!" It was that good to me.