Apple Tablet Design Circa 1987

Posted by Editor on Jan 19, 2010 in Apple, Tablets

We’re all waiting around for the shoe or rather the tablet to drop from Apple later this month. But would you believe Apple was toying with the idea as early as 1987? Back then it was called a Knowledge Navigator.

The device opened like a book, with the “spine” lifting the face to an easy reading angle, and acting as a carrying handle when closed. It also sported a video camera similar to a modern webcam with a slot in the upper right for a memory card, and the grills on either side of the screen are speakers. Check out this video showing the Navigator in action:

More details about Apple’s early tablet plans from Wikipedia:

Apple produced several concept videos showcasing the idea. All of them featured a tablet style computer with numerous advanced capabilities, including an excellent text-to-speech system with no hint of “computerese”, a gesture based interface resembling the multitouch interface later used on the iPhone and an equally powerful speech understanding system, allowing the user to converse with the system via an animated “butler” as the software agent.

In one vignette a university professor returns home and turns on his computer, in the form of a tablet the size of a large-format book. The agent is a bow-tie wearing butler who appears on the screen and informs him that he has several calls waiting. He ignores most of these, from his mother, and instead uses the system to compile data for a talk on deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. While he is doing this, the computer informs him that a colleague is calling, and they then exchange data through their machines while holding a video based conversation.
In another such video, a young student uses a smaller handheld version of the system to prompt him while he gives a class presentation on volcanoes, eventually sending a movie of an exploding volcano to the video “blackboard”. In a final installment a user scans in a newspaper by placing it on the screen of the full-sized version, and then has it help him learn to read by listening to him read the scanned results, and prompting when he pauses.
The videos were written and conceived by Hugh Dubberly and Doris Mitsch of Apple Creative Services, and produced by The Kenwood Group in San Francisco. The videos were directed by Randy Field, and the director of photography was Bill Zarchy. The product industrial design was created by Gavin Ivester and Adam Grosser of Apple design.
The astute bow tie wearing software agent in the video has been the center of quite a few heated discussions in the domain of human-computer interaction. It was criticized as being an unrealistic portrayal of the capacities of any software agent in the foreseeable future, or even in a distant future. Some user interface professionals like Ben Shneiderman of the University of Maryland, College Park have also criticized its use of a human likeness for giving a misleading idea of the nature of any interaction with a computer, present or future.

So remember this on January 27th, Apple’s plans have been kept under wraps for a very long time. The wait ought to be worth it.

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Tags: Amazon, Apple, Human–computer interaction, Industrial design, iPhone, Knowledge Navigator, San Francisco, User interface