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During an illustrious history that has brought us the iPod, iMac, PowerBook and OS X, Apple has pumped countless dollars into products that didn’t live up to its standards for mass production. As sought after as Apple’s finished products, Cupertino prototypes are the stuff of lore, fetching big bucks on eBay, and spawning tall tales of what was, and what should have been.
Tablets, phones, projectors, artificial intelligence ... and to think, these are only the ones we've heard about:
PenLite
Those clamoring for a bona fide Tablet Mac to finally emerge from Apple’s laboratories might want to use Time Machine to travel back to 1993 and convince CEO John Sculley to take some of his eggs out of Newton’s basket. Blinded by the ultimately doomed MessagePad, Sculley prematurely pulled the plug on PenLite, a lightweight, full-fledged, Mac OS-capable PowerBook Duo with a stylus instead of a mouse and a touch screen instead of a keyboard. Fifteen years later, we’re still waiting for it.
PowerBop
While Apple loses points for the wholly uncool antennae and ridiculous name--not an internal joke, but rather a tie-in with France Telecom’s groundbreaking Bi-Bop mobile phone--the technology behind PowerBop was nothing short of revolutionary. Designed as the first wireless laptop in Apple’s arsenal, Macintosh PowerBop was canceled way back in 1993 due to incessant bugs and a unreliable network. By the time Apple could get it to work, it was called Airport and the rest, well, is history.
Apple Interactive Television
The Holy Grail of products that didn’t quite make it to shelves. Apple’s original set-top box beat TiVo to the game by several years, and was the first of its kind to allow pausing and rewinding of live TV (via an interactive service provider) and even a little recording (to an attached VCR). A true computer for the living room, AppleITV included RCA audio/video, S-Video, coaxial, and ethernet, SCSI and serial ports, but no hard drive. Unfortunately, without a service to connect to, or anywhere to store media, the thing is pretty useless, but that doesn’t stop people from paying more for an AppleITV than for an AppleTV to get their hands on one.
WALT
While it could be distant cousin of Pixar’s Wall-E, the unfortunately named Wizzy Active Lifestyle Telephone is actually the first known predecessor to the iPhone. Designed closely with then-telecommunications giant BellSouth and built like a giant trackpad, WALT was a cumbersome “screen-based telephone” that allowed you to “turn your phone into an electronic address book, message pad and fax machine,” or so said the instruction manuals that made the rounds with early prototypes. Its killer app was integration with BellSouth’s ANYWHERE Fax Service, which transformed WALT into a full-featured mobile fax machine. The benefits of lugging a giant phone around on the off-chance a fax arrives are largely unproven, but something about WALT’s WYSIWYG futurism is still appealing.
Starfish
Another joint effort circa 1993, Starfish was actually an Apple-branded incarnation of an Epson multimedia projector. Targeted to Mac-devoted business clients and sporting an internal speaker system and long-range IR remote, Apple bailed on the project after just a few months of development, leaving Epson in the lurch to finish the project alone, which they did. The ELP-3500 that released in 1996? Let’s just say it originated in the sea.
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media sorcerer
May 21, 2009 at 9:57pm
thanx for this article it is fascinating to see the evolution of technology,
jbrugue
January 30, 2009 at 5:08am
Has anyone come up with a solution of moving files within your hard disk. I am new to this system and find this limitation very annoying.
jbrugue
January 30, 2009 at 5:08am
Has anyone come up with a solution of moving files within your hard disk. I am new to this system and find this limitation very annoying.
MacSnapOn
January 11, 2009 at 8:18pm
I had a Newton 130 at one time. I loved it, it went everywhere with me and I used it for a year before it broke down. Of course it was over 6 years old and had been well used before I got it. It beat any Palm device though, and the writing recognition beat Palm One out by a landslide.
The eMate was a great little portable computer that combined the best about the Newton and a laptop computer. Great for the kids to use, and they did up until 2002 when the schools shipped them out to the recycling facilities and started going PC and PalmOne.
fortwaldron
January 05, 2009 at 1:26pm
Man, you must have written this senseless and juvenile piece of meandering blather on a Windows machine, right?
Oh, I'm sorry - Let me do that again with smaller words.
You are a Nixon!
NewMediaRoc
December 04, 2008 at 7:42am
I can attest that the Newton is real. My step-father had one years ago when he worked for Rochester Institute of Technology. Apple used to send him lots of products to try out and keep. I'm not sure, but I think he may still have it.
The Newton was almost as big as a small lap top, it was slow as dirt, and had very, very limited capability. But for its time, it was ground-breaking. I remember being a kid thinking how cool it was to have a computer I could carry around in my hand... it even had a couple of games!
Susie Ochs
December 04, 2008 at 11:04am
The Mac|Life staff has a Newton (and now, an eMate!) and we frequently spend entire minutes joyfully scribbling stuff like "Beat Up Martin" with the stylus and giggling at the handwriting recognition results. Good times!
Michael Simon
December 04, 2008 at 10:05am
Yes, Newtons are very real. But Steve said Apple had developed a post-Newton PDA that was never released.
St
December 03, 2008 at 10:29pm
You're an a88hole. You write like you're composing a text book, and you mock those who like the PowerPad. Why do you think that's cool? because it's not... You may think you're cool, but, that's not true, you're audience dosent think you're cool, but they think PowerPad is cool, so instead of begrudging, let's place ourselves next to the tragic. Might as well let people think you're with them instead of being a certain braggart not far past your first sentence. I mean s*** Know what im saying? Email me.
Brendan Bartholomew
December 09, 2008 at 8:58pm
"You're" is an abbreviation of "you are," so you just told somebody (The author of this piece? The author of whatever Nintendo-related article on some gaming site you thought you were commenting on?) "...that's not true, you are audience dosent [SIC] think you are cool."Then you said things like, "...so instead of begrudging, let's place ourselves next to the tragic."Then there's this accusation that the object of your scorn is a "certain braggart?"Did any of this make sense in your native tongue? Yes? You think it did? Well I hate to tell you this, but Google Language Tools has let you down, buddy.Know what I'm saying? Email me.
Michael Simon
December 03, 2008 at 11:07pm
I'd love to respond, but I don't know what you're talking about. PowerPad? You mean the Nintendo thing?
colinc
December 03, 2008 at 10:54pm
Seriously, what are you going on about? I thought this was great! And no, no one know's what you're saying, it didn't make much sense.
