The Web is awash with visions of a forthcoming Mac netbooks, or an iPhone with a keyboard, or simply a mobile Mac that's less expensive than the current product line. All of these imaginings are as likely as one made by an Apple thinktank some 20 years ago and another by the Onion.
The Web is awash with visions of a forthcoming Mac netbooks, or an iPhone with a keyboard, or simply a mobile Mac that's less expensive than the current product line. All of these imaginings are as likely as one made by an Apple thinktank some 20 years ago and another by the Onion.
And again, it's good to remember the almost netbook (sans net) that Apple made more than a decade ago.
In his 1987 book Odyssey, then Apple CEO John Sculley wrote about a visionary notebook called the Knowledge Navigator. The device incorporated many then-nascent technologies (and some still on the drawing board), including speech recognition and commands, software agents, real-time video chats, wireless communication, smartcard storage and broadband. It envisioned that users would able to manipulate various types of data across online libraries, much like they do on Star Trek.
A video was created of the concept. It's interesting. The desktop of the Knowledge Navigator notebook has a bare, Mac-like interface with a trash can in the corner and a number of quaint icons of a Book and a Movie projector. There are menus for File, Network, Tools, Schedule, and Agent.
The video is worth viewing as a piece of Mac history. At the time, Apple had a division known as the Advanced Technology Group that worked on basic computing research, such as human interface interaction, mobility and software agent technology. I remember talking to several of them about work on agents in medical applications and drug databases.
ATG was downsized over time and finally reorganized out of general research.
Meanwhile, the influence of the iPod hardware interface on the Mac was the subject of a very funny video at the Onion News Network called Apple Introduces Revolutionary Laptop With No Keyboard. Instead of a keyboard, the MacBook Wheel uses a giant click wheel.
According to the report, the benefits of the clickwheel are obvious."The intuitive design replaces dozens of keys with a single wheel."
With the MacBook Wheel, Apple has replaced the traditional keyboard with the sleek, touch-sensitive click-wheel. Senior Product Innovator Brian Gillman, "Everything is just a few hundred clicks away."
For yet another vision of an Apple netbook, I remind you of the eMate 300, code-named Shay released in 1997. The mobile device came with integrated a keyboard and display in a green, shock-resistant ABS plastic enclosure shaped like a clamshell. It came with 1MB of DRAM for running applications and 2MB of flash for storage. The eMate was based on the Newton OS and its a productivity suite with word processing, dictionary, drawing and calculator modules; as well as the usual address book and calendar tools.
Check Out: The low-cost laptop that Apple should have built (and sort-of once did)
This device wasn't really a netbook, since it didn't come with a browser and certainly didn't connect wirelessly. But that was in the plans. My MacWEEK colleague Don Crabb wrote in late 1996:
Later, Apple will produce eMates for other markets, each with hardware and software to suit them. For example, in traveling businessperson’s guise, an eMate selling for less than $800 would let you surf the Net; handle e-mail; keep expenses, client lists and related business data; plus other traveling cyberessentials. All in a solid-state device that’s light and rugged.
