Maybe having devices like the iPhone 13 Pro Max in our hands makes us lose the perspective that really only 15 years ago we have devices like that. In the field of technology, this period of time is even longer due to the exponential progress that has been made in recent years, but it is amazing to think that just over 30 years ago, the most amazing thing we had at home was 8-bit computers.
For Steve Jobs, it was always a sci-fi dream to have at least a device “the size of a book and with the power of a computer”, only his bike for the mind was much faster than for the rest. In the 80s, Hartmut Esslinger was the one who drew the lines of the future that Apple wanted to achieve. Devices like the AirTag, and everything we find out about them, would have surprised him as a concept.
Jobs’ rejection of the Newton had more to do with its immature technology than its concept.
Jobs’ rejection of the Newton, perhaps the most dystopian made in Cupertino – although the real reason for its failure was the implementation of a technology that was not yet mature. The 90s apple that she no longer had Steve Jobs in her ranks seemed to prove something, but she was dismissed with her return to the company because it was too soon. However, the dream of carrying a computer in your pocket is something that would continue to sink behind the company’s back until the original iPhone was launched in 2007.
“Wow! Is it a Macintosh?
Industrial designer Rex Sowards yesterday answered a question many of us may have had in the presentation of the iPhone – and that many have wondered during previous rumors. Is the iPhone a Mac? Sowards answers the question, but going back to the days of the original Macintosh, in what you would think would be an alternate world where the company gets the technology to create a real pocket Macintosh
The idea to create something like this came from watching the Kimmy Schmidt series, where in one sequence she is holding an iPhone and freaking out: “Wow! Is it a Macintosh?. Her reaction makes sense since in the fiction, the protagonist has been rescued from a cult in recent years where she spent 15 years – with which she sense the technology is different from the rest of the world. Sowards studied the industrial design of the original Macintosh and it also took many ideas from similar technology at the time: the Game Boy, as the following image will remind you:
The design is somewhat reminiscent of the legacy of CRT tube monitors, with curved screenwhich further reinforces the feeling of a device from another era:
For the designer, one of the most complicated aspects to achieve is the hypothetical mouse tracking in a world where touchscreen technology wasn’t that advanced. He solved it with the Trackball that many of us still remember from the legendary early PowerBooks:
The side reminds us of a mix between the original macintosh case and a volume knob also widely used at the time. Of course, with headphone jack:
the design would have been everything a dream for the time – logically impossible tech-wise – but a good design exercise for fans of the brand that Sowards solves with that dystopian air we love so much. Unfortunately, it does not have a built-in floppy disk drive, but it has all the connectors of the Macintosh Classic: Apple Desktop Bus (ADB), connection for printer, modem and a SCSI DB-25 hard disk connector:
Undoubtedly a spectacular design exercise with a few issues to resolve (how is it charged? Is it still connected to mains?) but at the time this would have been a technological breaking point perhaps as important as he was. of the iPhone in 2007.
