

Knight Ridder promo video from 1994 describes iPad-esque tablet device [video] - optiplex
http://www.edibleapple.com/knight-ridder-promo-video-from-1994-describes-ipad-esque-tablet-device-video/

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iuguy
That's a pretty interesting video and it's surprising to see how much carried
on through newton, palm and so on to iPad.

As a completely unrelated aside, is it just me or was anyone else secretly
hopping that ridder was a typo and that we were going to see something from
Knight Rider?

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RobertHubert
Ill admit when I first read the title I thought oh yeah that car probably did
have some iPad like thing in it haha!

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Groxx
Very interesting combination of concepts and total prediction failures. To
anyone debating, it's worth watching.

My personal favorite was "People don't buy generic news, they buy a specific
newspaper, with a branded identity". I wonder what caused the change. Poor
digital adoption by newspapers, paywalls, and aggregators that do a better job
matching your interests get my votes.

edit: I wonder if newspapers wouldn't be in such bad shape today if they had
embraced tech like the video suggests. I still boggle at how much resistance
they seem to have to change - you'd think a _news agency_ would have noticed
the struggling/death of others with similar behavior that they had been
reporting on, and realized it applies to them as well.

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mtinkerhess
Let's assume that the tablet isn't the end-all of consumer computing
interfaces. If people were prototyping tablets 15 years ago, what are people
prototyping today that will overtake tablets in another 15 years?

I'd guess more seamless integration between mobile devices and stationary
components (displays, keyboards). I'd also like to see more portable, hands-
free displays, e.g. in glasses or contact lenses.

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coldarchon
probably first we see something like in Final Fantasy - The Spirits Within. A
holographic device on your wrist, then we get into cyberpunk with glasses,
then contact lenses and then implants ..

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jarin
Actually, I think the holographic wrist device could be done with a pair of
augmented reality glasses and a wristband with a little AR marker on it for
orientation. Of course, you'd be the only one able to see it (unless you're
linked up with other people with the same glasses). Actually, that brings up
an interesting idea. If a lot of people have AR glasses, they can all
experience a shared reality with all kinds of crazy "holographic" stuff flying
around. Of course, it's going to be weird for the people who don't have the
glasses.

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wuzzles
Just think if this had been pushed harder by the company or sold to Apple, IBM
or Microsoft. That could have changed our current landscape of tech giants. It
was an amazing prototype at the time but it seemed there was no execution and
it was too far ahead to make it a reality.

I also thought this was a typo and Knight Rider the show had some "IPad" type
device on it.

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flomo
In 1994, tablets weren't exactly science fiction, they were real shipping
products. (Apple Newton, AT&T Go Tablet, various PCs with Pen Windows, etc.)

What's shown in the video is simply a smaller/lighter/colorful version of what
already existed -- perhaps predicting it would take iPad-like proportions to
make a tablet successful.

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Roritharr
I love how his wife at around 5minutes is already annoyed by him using this
device while they are eating in a cafe.

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zerostar07
"around the turn of the century" - we are 10 years late people!

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paulnelligan
hmmmm, I'm guessing they didn't take any patents at that time then ... but
Apple sure as hell did ...

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rwmj
Prior art ...

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pointyhat
Let us not forget the Acorn NewsPAD:

<http://acorn.chriswhy.co.uk/Computers/NC.html#NewsPAD>

[http://acorn.chriswhy.co.uk/docs/Acorn/ART/ART_DS003_NewsPAD...](http://acorn.chriswhy.co.uk/docs/Acorn/ART/ART_DS003_NewsPAD.pdf)

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coldarchon
watch the movie Demolition man. It's from 1993 and you see the first
appearance of a tablet like an iPad ..

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georgemcbay
Star Trek: TNG started in 1987 and they were carrying around iPad-esque
devices in some episodes. I seem to remember Geordi Laforge often having one
when interacting with the ship's engineering computer or whatever.

I'm mostly surprised by the fact that people are surprised by this video --
Fujitsu and others have been making tablets commercially for 15+ years. Alan
Kay was talking about them in the 70s. The iPad was the right device at the
right time (which is hugely important), but hardly a new idea in any way.

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Bud
You're referring to the PADD:

<http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/PADD>

