Apple's First Phone Designs

it makes me want apple to incorporate phone capabilities in all macs. just plug in a phone line (in addition to support for voip) and dial away.

Siemens made a Newton phone, btw

arn

Siemens made a Newton phone, btw

arn

Looks like one of those pda cell phone padfolios that you can fold up and put in your briefcase.
Cute

some cool looking stuff. Interesting to see. Jobs was at apple then. In the images, I saw the apple phone, and a cube computer design. Both which jobs revisited upon returning. I wonder how much of that stuff is representative of Steve Jobs, and if any of that is still floating around in his head for product ideas.

I assume that triangle thing was a mouse, it actually looked pretty comfortable in the hand for being so angular.

"I know that hand. It was in the fall 1973 Bulova watch catalog." - Derrick Zoolander


Interesting stuff, I wonder if the bill collectors would still charge a fee for check by phone. This also brought back to mind the AT&T video phones, what ever happened to them?

Wow some of these are so cool! :D This Macintosh design almost looks like an iMac.

Plus I'm sure this would of ended up worse than the puck-mouse, hehe :) Great story!

Wow some of these are so cool! :D This Macintosh design almost looks like an iMac.

Plus I'm sure this would of ended up worse than the puck-mouse, hehe :) Great story!

Heck, that thing still looks better than a lot of PC's being sold. I'd buy it.

The son of Hartmut Esslinger, a designer for Apple in the early 80s posted a collection of never before published images of Apple Designs from the early 80s including several Apple phone designs.

Perhaps it was because of the breakup of AT&T in the early 1980's, but it seems everyone was working on phones. As evidenced by this...

http://www.atarimuseum.com/ataritel/index.html

Atari actually had some good industrial design back in the day. Too bad they got caught up in the price war with Commodore.

In the images, I saw the apple phone, and a cube computer design. Both which jobs revisited upon returning. I wonder how much of that stuff is representative of Steve Jobs, and if any of that is still floating around in his head for product ideas.

Well I think the Cube was probably derived from his NeXT origins, personally. Plus it would appear he's always been/still is fascinated with cube designs (NeXTCube, G4 Cube, Fifth Avenue Apple Store). But I, too, have always wondered if he trawled through Apple's past when he returned in '97.

I mean, it's quite amazing how a lot of those designs reflect current and recent Apple products. As LimeiBook86 pointed out, this looks like the G3 iMac.. This looks like the iBook/MacBook, or then-future Apple laptops. Leopard's Stacks dates from around 1994, and I'm sure there are a many more unutilized prototypes/ideas that have since been implemented that we don't know about. And if the naming on the images is accurate, it would seem certain names even came from that foregone era as well.

Interesting stuff, indeed.

Apple actually shipped 20 or so (for beta testing) of the The Paladin which was a Phone/Fax/Computer/Scanner/Copier/Printer. It was based on the PowerBook Duo. I owned one in 2002 and sold it a few months later on eBay. I'm surprised this was left out of the mix. Good article though.