I apologise for the lack of updates during the summer. I spent the month of July being exceedingly busy (I had an ebook of short stories to publish), and the month of August basically off the grid. I have an unbelievable email backlog, and I’ll try to reply to all the correspondence received from July on. If you wrote me at the compunabula address shown on the sidebar in the past couple of months and I didn’t get back to you, chances are I didn’t even see your email. Sorry if that has come across as rude on my part — that wasn’t the intention.
I wish I could update this blog more frequently, but please keep in mind that this isn’t one of my top-priority projects at the moment.
(Note: I published this impromptu piece last week on my main website, but I think it’s worth republishing here due to the nature of its content, and also for the benefit of those who only follow this blog.)
Right now I’m writing this in TextWrangler 2.1.3. When the post is finished, I’ll copy & paste it in WordPress’ Web interface and publish it here.
I’m writing this on a clamshell blueberry iBook G3/300. It has both Mac OS 9.2.2 and Mac OS X 10.3.9 installed on it. It has 288 MB RAM. It has what now can be considered a tiny hard drive: 3 GB. Of those 3 GB, the OS X partition only has 803.4 MB of free disk space. But everything works fine. The screen is bright: brighter than, say, my other clamshell iBook G3/466 SE, which is a newer model.
Across the table there is a PowerBook G4 12” burning a CD-RW of stuff to archive (mostly documentation and manuals in PDF format), and a PowerBook 5300ce performing a backup on a few ZIP disks.
I’m writing this with three other apps opened: Preview, NetNewsWire 2.1.5 (which is very snappy and configured with some essential feeds I want to be able to read even from this machine), and Opera 10.10, which is the last version of this fine browser that is compatible with Mac OS X 10.3.9. It has six tabs open at the moment, two of which let me keep an eye on Twitter and App.net.
I’m writing from this old iBook because 20 minutes ago I decided to boot it with the intention of downgrading it to just a Mac OS 9 machine. Once this Mac had a very long-lasting battery (more than 5 hours) and an AirPort card. But I neglected it for a long time with the battery drained, and last time I tried reviving it was all in vain. The AirPort card was removed and given to a Titanium PowerBook G4, which needed it more than this iBook.
I’m writing this while connected to the Internet via Ethernet cable. It feels quaint, but I still smiled at how quickly the iBook connected to the Internet just four seconds after plugging in the cable.
I’m writing this while the battery — oh so magically, oh so surprisingly — is recharging after refusing to do so for so long. It’s at 11% now, and in 3 hours and 35 minutes the battery indicator says it will be fully charged.
As I’m writing this, I feel my writing flowing out rather effortlessly: is this vintage, minimalistic setup? Perhaps it is. Perhaps it’s just how I roll, no matter where I am, or which device I’m writing on. But now I’m having second thoughts and maybe I won’t wipe Mac OS X. Maybe with a full battery, I’ll still find some use for this iBook. Its design may look dated, but boy is it comfortable to write on. My wrists just rest in the right position. My fingers reach every corner of the keyboard without effort. I even like the feel of this keyboard more than when I type on my MacBook Pro’s keyboard.
When you browse the Web, you realise how cramped and slightly impractical a screen resolution of 800×600 is today. But in some sites it somehow helps you focus more on the articles, while ads, banners and other visual interferences remain hidden outside the browser window’s width and height. There’s more scrolling, there’s just a bit more effort, but it’s not as annoying as you’d expect. Not for me, at least.
I’m writing this and I’m thinking about all the obsession about workflows and frictionless setups and I’m thinking “Screw it, sometimes the best workflow is what you have with you” or something like that. Maybe a bit of friction is necessary to make you go just a wee bit slower, enough to make you think about what you’re doing and not simply do stuff in auto-pilot.
I’m writing this and I’m thinking about all the obsession about when to write, and how often, and that inspiration is a myth, and that you just have to sit and write everyday, and so on. I still think that inspiration is what makes you write a bit more meaningfully. But everything works. Why does a method have to be better than another? Perhaps something starts in the most unassuming, trivial circumstances, and ends up being more meaningful than something else you’ve been mulling over for days, while consuming dozens of cups of coffee.
I’m writing this on this iBook because I love vintage technology and thankfully when it comes to working with text, I’m lucky enough to be able to use any of my Macs or devices, no matter how old, in a productive way. And that feels good.
The past months have been difficult, on a personal level. Lots of work and a lot of things going on have prevented me from updating this space as often as I wanted. And this 2012 hasn’t exactly started the way I wished. Nevertheless, in the last month I received a few unexpected and marvellous emails from kind fellows who like this humble place I started in 2008. Since I don’t want to come across as a bad correspondent and ungrateful moron, I think that a public thank-you post is the least I can do. I have realised what brighter people than me (Lucio and Grant to name a couple) told me long ago — that this blog has a greater potential than what I’d imagined. The recent wave of positive feedback only corroborated that insight. I will do my best to provide more interesting content more often in the forthcoming months.
So, here’s a shout-out to my recent correspondents:
Grant Hutchinson — Thank you for the package you sent me in December. You’ve given me good RAM chips for my clamshell iBooks and for the PowerBook G3 Lombard, plus there was enough RAM to bring my Power Macintosh 9500/132 to a whopping 1.5GB RAM. The inclusion of reference materials such as WebObjects Developer’s Guide and a few issues of develop – The Apple Technical Journal was a very welcome addition to my small collection of vintage printed material. Other excellent items (not related to vintage technology) were just the icing on the cake.
Eric K. — Thank you so much for sending me some RAM chips for the PowerBook G3 Lombard. The low-profile chips were essential in expanding the PowerBook’s RAM. For those who don’t know, the Lombard has two RAM slots, but when you remove the keyboard you only see one. To access the second, you have to remove the daughter card where the visible slot resides; the second RAM slot (accepting low-profile chips) is located directly underneath the visible slot, on the opposite side of the daughter card.
Lyle B. — Thank you for writing me and offering me a very nice Macintosh Plus system. I told you we would talk again after the festive period and I promise we’ll talk soon. I had a few financial issues in the meantime and I thank you for your patience and for the kind words you wrote about System Folder
Adam Rosen — Thanks for your email! I had already bookmarked your excellent website, The Vintage Mac Museum and it’s been an honour and a pleasure to hear from you. Adam too offers data retrieval services, so don’t hesitate to contact me or him if you want a chance to retrieve stuff you’re keeping on old media.
TC Clark — Thank you for your email and your suggestions regarding the configuration of Netscape Messenger with Gmail. My old post, Classic Email Clients vs Gmail is in need of a follow-up, which I’ll publish as soon as I put the Power Macintosh 9500/132 back in service.
Finally, thanks to all the people who have recently discovered my blog and have commented here. I’ll try to get back to you as soon as I can. And of course, thank you everyone for stopping by. You also make this place better. May you all have a great 2012!
After an unforgivable delay, here’s another installment of my diverse experiences with vintage Apple hardware sellers.
2. The elusive Macintosh SE/30
I have wanted this particular Mac since the 1990s, but for a reason or another, it’s been an unexpectedly difficult hunt, to the point that I started giving it another codename: White Whale. If I recall correctly, I’ve had at least 10 good opportunities to acquire a SE/30 over the years… or so I thought. Here are some notable examples of those occasions.
Attempt 1: A seller lists a “MAC SE30 with CD-ROM”, rather cheap, available for pickup only, fortunately at an address very close to where I was living at the time. I take my car and go to his house at the preferred time of day he indicated in the ad. He only gave his address, so I couldn’t contact him to check the veracity of his listing. (I was a bit suspicious of that with CD-ROM part, but I figured it was a Macintosh SE/30 with an external SCSI CD-ROM unit, which is not that uncommon a combination). After a friendly handshake, he told me he was glad someone was already showing up for the Mac, he only put the ad the day before. Then we went on the back of the house, he opened the garage door and there it was… a Performa 630CD. “Not the model I was looking for,” I told him. He looked puzzled and a little annoyed, so I explained I was looking for a ‘Macintosh SE/30’ and that the ad (I showed him) said indeed ‘Mac SE30’, not ‘Performa 630’. “They must have misread my handwriting when I placed the ad,” he replied, “I wrote Mac 630 on the slip”… A long awkward pause, then I politely took leave of him.
Attempt 2: I notice that a mailing list acquaintance mentions that the company where he works is in the process of transferring him to another office in a different building and since the space is a bit more cramped, he’ll have to get rid of some of his old Macs he keeps in a shelf for display, a SE/30 among them. I contact him immediately, manifesting my interest for the SE/30. He’s a bit taken aback by my promptness, but we easily arrange things (the usual drill: here’s my address, send the Mac to me and I’ll pay shipping, etc.) and he even goes as far as telling me “I appreciate your contributions to the list and I’m glad the SE/30 goes to a good home”. After that, silence. A week passes. Three weeks pass. I send emails, nothing. I ‘ping’ the guy on the mailing list, nothing. Two months go by. I’m not the kind who obsesses over things, but that suspended situation simply made me uncomfortable. I wasn’t hoping to see the SE/30 anymore yet I was curious to know what happened. I admit I was starting to worry for the guy himself: maybe something bad happened to him, maybe he was involved in an accident or something. So I went to the nearest Italian branch of the company he worked for (he was in Germany) and asked if someone could get him on the phone for me. “Urgent personal business” I said to the receptionist. She was kind enough to phone the German office and after a while she got his extension and gave me the receiver. “Hello? How can I help you?” – I explained who I was and why I was calling. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about” – I said something like ‘heh heh, nice joke’ – “No, seriously, who are you and how did you get my number?” – I explained what happened two months before in greater detail, then his chilling answer: “Yes, that’s my email address, but I never subscribed to that mailing list you mention, never heard your name before, and I’ve never even owned a Mac computer. So, if you don’t mind, I have work to do” and he hung up. I thanked the receptionist and went away, more puzzled than before. Had someone taken his identity to post on mailing lists and scam people? (But there was no scam, since I hadn’t paid shipping costs in advance). Had it been a prank from a co-worker of the guy I spoke with on the phone? Or was it him all along? You know, maybe he gave or sold the SE/30 to another person for better money and, instead of apologising for such rudeness, he came up with all that “I don’t know you and what you’re talking about” bullshit. If so, it was a great performance since my call was totally unexpected and two months after the fact. Every time I recall this episode, it still makes me wonder…
Attempt 3: Seven years ago I briefly collaborated with a graphic design and advertising agency. As it often happens in these places, you could spot the occasional vintage Mac when visiting the offices. Usually someone keeps the first machines that were running when the agency started its business a few years or decades back. In this case, it was the founder himself and his son. Both great people, I must say. Both treated me well while I was there. But the Macintosh SE/30 affair was another memorable episode. At that point I was starting to believe that that machine was sort of cursed. Or had a proprietary port my karma couldn’t connect with. One day I was at my temporary desk and the founder’s son, G., approaches me and tells me that there are some old Macs and assorted hardware they have to throw away to make room for more modern equipment and because they need to set up a new office for a recently-hired designer. “They are in the storeroom at the end of the corridor. Go take a look and then you’ll have a couple of days to take away whatever you like before we dump everything”, G. said. Music to my ears, especially when I saw a Macintosh SE/30 lying there, complete with video card to attach an external two-page black & white 21″ Radius monitor. Later that same afternoon, when it was time to leave, I picked the SE/30, an Apple Adjustable Keyboard, an ADB mouse, an old ADB graphic tablet, the 21″ Radius monitor and loaded my trusty Fiat Panda. It felt like Christmas. It was Thursday. The following Monday G. came to me, remarkably agitated and asked me to pray tell him whether there was a Macintosh SE/30 with a B440010 sticker on the back among the things I took from the storeroom. I told him “Why, yes, it’s the only SE/30 I found”. “Oh thank God!” – he replied – “You’ll have to bring it back, I’m afraid”. I was confused: “Didn’t you tell me to take what I wanted because all that stuff was to be thrown away?” I replied, and G. said: “Yes, but there has been a mistake. That SE/30 is from my father’s collection, plus it still contains sensitive information. You understand…” “If it’s a matter of personal data, tell your dad I haven’t even turned the Mac on yet, and I could pull the hard drive out and give it to him…”, I replied. He got agitated again: “NO, no, believe me, it’s best if you just bring the SE/30 back tomorrow. You don’t want to see my father angry…” — Oh well, I gave up: “Calm down, G., tomorrow that precious SE/30 will be back, and cleaner than before”. The day after I put the Mac on G.’s desk.
Just so you know, I finally got to enjoy a Macintosh SE/30 only rather recently and thanks to Roberto, a reader of this blog, who sent me one two years ago (read more here, with another two little anecdotes about my misfortunes with this particular Mac model). I guess the spell is broken now, yes?
I’ve been dealing with vintage Mac hardware since 1997, more or less. That means dealing with a lot of different people. With the exception of a few acquaintances I met in person and sometimes more than once, in most cases I’ve dealt with people living quite far away and therefore only via electronic communication. In almost 15 years I can say I’ve collected some peculiar anecdotes. And there’s something I need to get out of my system right away: I don’t know if it has been just a matter of bad luck, but my statistical sample of vintage Mac hardware sellers is largely composed of the most unpredictable, unfathomable array of imbeciles I’ve ever met.
Here are some of the most egregious cases: you’ll be the judge of their behaviour, and who knows, maybe you can even explain it to me.
1. Recycled before sale
One of my first forays into the used Apple hardware market was rather disastrous. My favourite Apple II system is the //c — and I never got the chance to own one. My first attempt at acquiring it was in the late 1990s, answering an ad in the Classified section of a computer magazine. The seller described the item as a complete Apple //c system, with 9-inch monitor and assorted diskettes and was selling it at a rather low price, roughly equivalent to today’s 70-80 Euros. The only way to contact him was via phone, so I called. I didn’t expect much: an ad in a well-known computer magazine probably catches the attention of hundreds of readers. But when I enquired about the Apple //c, the seller told me it was still available, that I was only the second person calling about it.
“Do you have any problems with the price?”, he asked me (a young voice, probably a guy around 20).
“No, that’s fine”, I replied.
“Are you from around here?”
“Not really, you’ll have to mail me the package. I hope it’s not an issue.”
“No, of course. You’ll have to add the shipping costs to the price I wrote in the ad, you understand.”
“Yes, I imagined.”
“And it’s okay with you?”
“Absolutely.”
“Good! But I’m afraid I can’t send it to you until early next week.”
“I’m in no hurry. Here’s my number. When you’ve prepared the package, just give me a call and your banking information. I’ll wire you the money and when you have confirmation from your bank, you can send me the package.”
“Good. Let’s do this, then.”
This is roughly what happened on the phone upon first contact. Nothing really strange: the guy sounded a bit antsy but I got the feeling he’d never dealt with a sale before, so I attributed his way of handling the conversation to inexperience, mostly. During that weekend I heard from a long-time friend who happened to live close to the seller. I told him about the Apple //c and he suggested I went to visit him by train, stop by the seller to pick up the hardware on the way, spend the day with him (my friend) and then he would give me a ride home in his car, so that I didn’t have to carry the package around myself. That seemed a good plan and a happy coincidence, so I called the seller to explain the change of plan. After a couple of attempts, I finally could talk with him. He kept sounding a bit nervous and for a moment I thought that perhaps my change of plan had sounded suspicious to him in some way, or maybe he didn’t want to have strangers showing up at his (or his parents’) house. Therefore I tried to be as open and friendly as possible, telling him that it was a good thing for both, because I wouldn’t have to pay for shipping, and he would avoid the hassle of carefully packaging the hardware and going to the post office; plus, I would pay him directly, cash at hand, so no unnecessary waits for both of us. In the end he agreed it was a good idea and gave me his home address. We then established a time for the pickup.
I was already on the train when the seller called me, telling me he was very sorry but the Apple //c system was not available anymore. I was surprised and angry, and what was making me even angrier was his being vague about the reasons of that sudden unavailability. I raised my voice and told him that I was already on the train and it was going to be a two-hour trip for nothing, so I demanded an explanation. He finally caved in and sheepishly said: “Well… the fact is that I can’t find it anymore”.
“What? What does it mean you can’t find it anymore? It’s not a small thing one loses.”
“It was in a box in the garage. Maybe my dad threw it away when he went to the recycler yesterday.”
“You agreed to sell that system with someone, and you didn’t even bother to separate it from other stuff or put a ‘Don’t touch’ sign on the box!?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say. I have to go now.”
“Yeah, you go now, you miserable idiot!”
Every time I find an ad with an Apple //c system for sale, I can’t help recalling this episode.
On April Fool’s Day, I usually look for interesting jokes of the past. And I’ve found one that is related to vintage technology. From the Write-only memory Wikipedia page:
Write-only memory (WOM) is the antithesis of read-only memory (ROM). By definition, a WOM is a memory device which can be written but never read. Since there seems to be no obvious use for such a memory circuit, from which data cannot be retrieved, the concept is most often used as a joke or a metaphor for a failed memory device.
The Signetics original
Out of frustration with the long and seemingly useless chain of approvals required of component specifications, during which no actual checking seemed to occur, an engineer at Signetics once created a specification for a write-only memory and included it with a bunch of other specifications to be approved. This inclusion came to the attention of Signetics management only when regular customers started calling and asking for pricing information. Signetics published a corrected edition of the data book and requested the return of the ‘erroneous’ ones.
Later, in 1972, Signetics bought a double-page spread in the April issue of Electronics and used the specification as an April Fool’s Day joke. Instead of the more conventional characteristic curves, the 25120 “fully encoded, 9046 x N, Random Access, write-only-memory” data sheet included diagrams of “bit capacity vs. Temp.”, “Iff vs. Vff”, “Number of pins remaining vs. number of socket insertions”, and “AQL vs. selling price”. The 25120 required a 6.3 VAC Vff (vacuum tube filament) supply, a +10 V Vcc (double the Vcc of standard TTL logic of the day), and Vdd of 0 V (ie. ground), ±2%.
At the bottom of the Wikipedia article, you’ll find links to a scan of the original data sheet in PDF format, but here they are anyway:
I really love Shawn Blanc’s Sweet Mac Setups series. The idea is simple and powerful: you contribute 1-3 photos of your current setup, and answer six questions:
What does your desk look like? [Photos here]
What is your current mac setup?
Why are you using this setup?
What software do you use on a daily basis, and for what do you use it?
Do you own any other mac gear?
Do you have any future upgrades planned?
This way, as Shawn aptly puts it, you can geek out over people’s workspace, software, and hardware. Since I wrote that post about My vintage writing corner, I’ve been thinking: how about doing a similar experiment, but with classic, vintage setups? I know there are a lot of vintage Mac geeks out there who, like me, still put their beige Macs to good use. Surely, along their modern setup, they’ll have a corner, small desk, or other secondary space with their vintage setup. If you’re one of them, and you would like to display your setup and talk about the classic hardware and software you still use (remember, nothing newer than Mac OS 9), consider dropping me a line (you can see my email in the sidebar). The questions are fewer and slightly different from Shawn Blanc’s Sweet Mac Setups, and are as follows:
What does your desk look like? [Photos here]
What is your vintage Mac setup?
Why are you using this setup?
What software do you use, and for what do you use it?
That’s it. In the following days I’ll try to invite some people whom I think might be interested in giving their contribution, but feel free to contact me if you like the idea and are a serious vintage Mac user/aficionado. If you decide to answer the questions and send me your setup description, don’t forget to add a brief profile and a link to a personal website or blog. Thanks in advance for your time!
Of course when I spotted the title of this article in my feed reader, I had to take a look. I suspected — given the year, 1983 — that it was about some prototype belonging to the SnowWhite Project, a concept that started the long and fruitful collaboration between Apple and frogdesign (yes, it’s spelled this way, all in one word, with a lowercase ‘f’). And when I saw the photos I immediately recognised Bashful. However, I didn’t remember it as a prototype tablet, more as a prototype notebook. So I checked The Book (that’s how I call AppleDesign: The work of the Apple Industrial Design Group by Paul Kunkel, New York, Graphis, 1997), and although it says at one point that the Bashful prototype had to have a 8.5 by 11 inch touch-sensitive, liquid crystal display (page 30), and at another point Bashful’s screen is described as a ‘detachable slate-like module’ (page 99), I am doubtful about calling it a tablet. I think it’s just a way to maintain the current level of hype surrounding the (hopefully) upcoming Apple device.
It’s really a matter of semantics. This Wikipedia entry about Tablet PCs should help define what a ‘tablet’, or ‘slate’ is. In most, if not all instances, a tablet device is something smaller and more portable than a notebook/laptop and, more importantly, it hasn’t got a keyboard. It may have it as an attachable option. But Bashful was the other way around: the concept, as far as I know and as far as I inferred from AppleDesign, was for a very light notebook, built in a modular way, with detachable parts (a floppy drive, a screen, a keyboard) but nowhere it’s mentioned, for instance, that Bashful could operate without a keyboard. In fact, I believe that the presence of a touch-sensitive display was meant to give Bashful some kind of added user interaction beyond the mandatory keyboard input method. Something like a notebook with graphic tablet capabilities. Maybe you could use the pen to draw on it, and select drawing tools (there was a version of Bashful that would target kids, as a matter of fact, and you can see it in the third and last picture in the Wired article), but I don’t think that it was meant to have an operating system whose interface could be solely operated with a pen or stylus in absence of the keyboard module.
Anyway, this is my impression and I could be wrong. I still think that the first handheld device, commercially available, fully usable (and designed to be used) without a keyboard, that deserves to be called tablet, or slate, is the Newton. At least in Apple’s history.
Some bits of context
So what about the other products that were meant to be part of the SnowWhite project? Here are some excerpts, again from AppleDesign:
By June of 1982, Esslinger [head of frogdesign] and BIB [another design company] had both received the Snow White design brief, which outlined the project’s goals with descriptions of eight products that would form the backbone of Apple’s future product line. […] The schedule called for work to begin in July 1982, be reviewed in September and November and conclude in January 1983 with a final presentation to the executive staff in Cupertino on March 17, 1983. […]
Named after characters in the Snow White story, complete with illustration of each character, the brief included descriptions of the eight products for which Esslinger and BIB would supply concepts:
Doc – a next-generation Lisa computer with a 15-inch portrait display, internal 5.25-inch hard disk, 3.5-inch floppy drive, keyboard and mouse, to be shipped in 1985;
Sneezy – a next-generation Apple II with a separate CPU, display, floppy drive and keyboard, for introduction in 1985;
Happy – an entry-level Macintosh that would be one-third smaller in size with a 9-inch display, for introduction in late 1984;
Bashful – a prototype notebook computer, having a 8.5 by 11 inch touch-sensitive, liquid crystal display, for introduction in 1986;
Sleepy – a desktop mouse;
Grumpy – a desktop dot-matrix printer;
Dopey – an external 3.5-inch floppy disk drive; and
Flower – an external 5.25-inch hard drive, named after a character from “Bambi.” (The Snow White story had only seven dwarfs).
[…] In January-February 1983, Esslinger’s team revised the Digital Designs concepts into 40 new hard models:
two versions of Sneezy (Apple II) with a monitor and stand;
three versions of Doc (Lisa) with different bezel treatments;
two versions of Happy (entry-level Macintosh);
the Workbench concept, which had eight elements (a track/CPU, display, floppy drive, telephone, loudspeaker, vertical dot-matrix printer, display stand, keyboard)
three versions of Bashful, the notebook computer [nota bene: “the notebook computer”] (a one-piece concept; a modular concept; and a wedge-shaped concept that tilted the keyboard and screen toward the user), each having a 9-inch flat panel LCD display;
three keyboard concepts (standard, extended, ultrathin) plus a piano-style keyboard for musical applications;
three versions of Sleepy, the desktop mouse (elegant, ergonomic, avant-garde);
three versions of Grumpy, the desktop printer;
concepts for Dopey and Flower (stand-alone floppy and hard disk drives) and a file server to link several Doc and Happy units together into a network;
15-inch and 19-inch monitors with display stands; and
connector cables for linking keyboards and peripherals with CPUs.
For those who own the AppleDesign book, or have the opportunity to access it at a library, the pictures portraying all these prototypes and concepts are at pages 96 through 100 (plates 16 through 50). They are really beautiful concepts and mockups, some of them maintaining a sober, clean, timeless style that still looks marvellous today.
As the late January Apple event gets closer, the buzz about the rumoured Apple Tablet is becoming deafening. And some people think that Apple is going to be the last to jump on the tablet/slate bandwagon. Well, think again. From an industrial design standpoint, Apple is doing research in the tablet field at least since the late 1980s. Everyone who knows a bit of Apple history of the past decade will surely have heard of the Newton, at least as a passing mention. The first Newton MessagePad was released in 1993, but the research behind it started as early as 1987. The first Newton ‘slate’ prototypes were codenamed Figaro, and some of them were designed by the renowned Italian industrial designer Giorgetto Giugiaro. There are some wonderful photos of those mockups and prototypes on the essential reference book for all things related to the Apple Industrial Design Group: AppleDesign: The work of the Apple Industrial Design Group by Paul Kunkel (with photographs by Rick English), New York, Graphis, 1997 (Now out of print, sadly).
But the development of the tablet idea and form factor didn’t stop when the first Newton MessagePads appeared. AppleDesign has many interesting images regarding other design investigations, increasingly more mature and refined than the Figaro project itself. I have scanned some of those images and copied some essential passages explaining the ideas which led to those prototypes and I want to show you what Apple was doing in the years 1992-1993 as regards to a possible Tablet. These projects were all cancelled, but in my opinion they demonstrate that 17-18 years ago Apple, design-wise, was many steps ahead of these PC Tablets recently introduced.
Another interesting detail that’s worth noting: Jonathan Ive was involved in almost all of the following projects. He had just started collaborating and working with Apple. I think it’s crucial that the same man who started designing hand-held, slate-like Apple products in 1992, happens to be the same man now leading the Industrial Design division in Apple and is surely responsible of the design of the new rumoured Apple Tablet (or Slate or whatever). Ive has witnessed almost 20 years of evolution of the tablet project inside Apple, and I think this continuity and his expertise are going to be fantastic ingredients in the (hopefully) upcoming tablet.
The following pictures and excerpts, as I mentioned before, are taken from the book AppleDesign: The work of the Apple Industrial Design Group by Paul Kunkel (with photographs by Rick English), New York, Graphis, 1997, and are copyrighted material. Kunkel, English, and Apple Inc. are the copyright holders. The reproduction of these pictures and excerpts is to be considered “fair use”, for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and the material will be removed at the request of the copyright owner(s).
I have also maintained the same Plate numbers for reference’s sake.
* * * * *
287288289
287, 288, 289. PenMac Hand-Held Computer Concept (Folio) with an integrated stylus, Mac-style user interface, CD-ROM drive and an infrared data terminal. Industrial Design: Apple Computer: Masamichi Udagawa. Dates of Design: August-October 1992 (project cancelled).
304 - 305306 - 307308
[In Plate 304 you can see WorkCase from another cancelled project, Juggernaut — Designed by Daniele DeIuliis, it’s a stand-alone computer with a full-sized color pen-addressable LCD, integrated stereo speakers positioned in the upper corners, a central microphone below the screen, a built-in modem with IR and spread-spectrum networking, and an external keyboard for text entry. WorkCase could accept a digital camera and an external hard drive. A leather cover protects the screen, and helps secure the pen as well, giving the concept a high-end business image.]
305, 308. Macintosh Folio, a portable Newton-like slate computer with an integrated stand.
306. Folio Keyboard, which connects to Macintosh Folio to form a desktop computer system. Industrial Design: Tangerine (London): Jonathan Ive.
307. SketchPad, a portable computer with height/tilt adjustable display that folds into a purse-shaped bundle. Dates of Design: April-June 1992.
317
317. Large-Format Newton Concept (Bic). Industrial design: Apple Computer: Marc van de Loo; John Tang and David Lima, product design. Dates of Design: March-August 1993 (project cancelled). [Note the name on the device: Newton MessageSlate]
* * * * *
Folio
During the summer of 1992, all of Apple seemed to be caught up in ‘Newton mania’. Apart from developments occurring within the Newton group itself, the Macintosh division was pursuing its own strategy for a hand-held Newton-like computer that would use the Mac interface, accept a Mac-style keyboard and mouse for desktop use, and (best of all) run Mac-compatible software, which Newton could not. “Once Newton development began to take off in 1992,” says Larry Barbera, “many people assumed that hand-held devices would do to the Macintosh what the Mac did to the Apple II — render it extinct. To counter this thinking, the Macintosh division developed their own Newton-like Macs.” The first concept, called PenLite, was the brainchild of Tom Gillies, who transferred from the Advanced Technology Group to the Portables Group in 1992, taking with him a concept that mated a PowerBook Duo form factor with a touch-sensitive Duo-sized screen. The second concept, known as PenMac, was a tablet-size device based on a Sony CD-ROM electronic book product. To attract interest and venture capital for the idea, PenMac’s chief evangelist Paul Mercer asked Masamichi Udagawa to design an appealing concept model, code-named Folio. “The Mac Group needed a compelling design to differentiate their product from Newton,” Udagawa recalls.
Ignoring the work that Giugiaro had done for the tablet-sized Figaro the year before, Udagawa gave Folio a simple, yet robust industrial-looking exterior. […] In the process, Udagawa broke new ground in his handling of shapes and surface details that would influence everyone in the Group.
The role of Jonathan Ive
[…] With business at Tangerine booming and prosperity just around the corner, most would assume that Ive had achieved the designer’s dream — true independence. Then, in early 1992, Ive received a telephone call from Bob Brunner, asking Tangerine to supply concepts for an in-house design project, code-named Juggernaut. The exercise included designs for portable computers, docking stations, electronic cameras and a Newton-like personal digital assistant. Within weeks, Ive and his partners developed 25 models, which they presented to Apple in the spring and refined into four principal designs. By the time it was over, Ive was a changed man.
The most interesting of these concepts was Macintosh Folio (305, 308; comparable to Daniele DeIuliis’s WorkCase), which Ive designed as a portable notebook-sized tablet with a touch-sensitive screen, a soft rounded base containing a battery pack, which also served as a palmrest, and an interesting ‘bull nose’ profile when viewed from the side. When tilted in an upright position on its integrated stand, Folio could be used on a desktop when attached to Folio Keyboard (306). Similar to DeIuliis’s Keyboard Station, Ive’s concept functioned as an ‘intelligent keyboard’ with a motherboard, networking ports, a recessed trackpad and infrared connection. Folio Keyboard could also be attached to a height-adjustable LCD screen to form a portable laptop concept called SketchPad (307). Drawing its intelligence from the processor in Folio Keyboard, SketchPad’s articulated screen was both height- and tilt-adjustable and could be folded into a tidy purse-shaped bundle for easy carrying.
[…]
When Brunner invited Ive to join the IDg, no one expected him to accept, if only because Tangerine was one of the fastest-growing design firms in London. But, for Ive, the Apple project had been a transforming experience. “Even though I had done a lot of interesting work up to that time, the issues I encountered on Juggernaut were unlike anything I had dealt with before,” he says. “The principal challenge — to give personality and meaning to a technology that was still being treated as though it were anonymous — interested mea lot. Also important was the fact that Apple offers a supportive environment. It’s the kind of place where a designer can focus less on day-to-day business and more on design as a craft.”
System Folder 