

Tablet: Personal Computer in the Year 2000 (1988) - kerneis
http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/articles/computing/88-tablet/

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jere
>This rectangular slab will weigh but a few pounds, and have no buttons or
knobs to play with. The front surface will be a touch-sensitive display
screen...

Uh oh. Call the lawyers.

Text version:
[http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/articles/general/...](http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/articles/general/88-tablet/1/text.html)

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kerneis
This is the winner of a competition organized by Apple in 1987 to design the
personal computer of the year 2000. The section "The Machine" in particular is
a surprisingly accurate description of current tablets.

~~~
CurtHagenlocher
I remember that competition! I started working on an entry with a few other
people in school, and remember that my contribution was the idea that there
would be separate processors for video and for audio.

~~~
jgw
Cool! Can I ask you for your predictions for 2038, and what you're investing
in today? ;)

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seanmcdirmid
Alan Kay and the DynaBook was 1968 or 69.

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kerneis
Alan Kay was a member of the jury for this contest (as well as Ray Bradbury
and Stephen Wozniak, among others).

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Great, but when I read their PDF, I didn't see any context at all. I'm
guessing this was an undergrad submission or something.

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kerneis
You probably skipped the abstract. (I agree that it looks weird to put extra-
information in the abstract, but in that case it is done for a reason: the
text of the paper is exactly the text submitted for the contest.)

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eliotayer
Interestingly, Wolfram credits Steve Jobs with giving him the name for
Mathematica.

He described their friendship in a blog post after Jobs passed away. I
wouldn't be surprised if they had had a conversation about tablets during the
iPad's development.

[http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2011/10/steve-jobs-a-few-
memo...](http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2011/10/steve-jobs-a-few-memories/)

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drallison
The original article was published in CACM. The similarity to the iPad is
uncanny.
[http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.127....](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.127.2616)

~~~
lloeki
While reading the article I personally found it being closer to the Newton for
some reason.

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motters
An uncannily accurate prediction of the tablet computer as we know it now.
These didn't appear in 2000, although by that time there were PDAs with touch
screens.

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jimktrains2
They're not too far off on some things (SMP, the tablet being a synthesis of
other devices like camera, audio recorder, &c), but other things never took
hold, like using IR as a communication system.

~~~
drd
The article contains pretty interesting predictions. Most of them have come
true today. But, we should consider the fact that tablet cannot replace a
personal computer for now.

“… PC has undeniable processing power that won't be available in mobile
devices at least for the next few decades. This will stay true until we start
to use another type of computing philosophy such as quantum computing.”

[[http://www.drdacademy.com/?id=will-pc-and-consequently-
softw...](http://www.drdacademy.com/?id=will-pc-and-consequently-software-for-
pc-die)]

~~~
jimktrains2
I'm not so sure. What's the difference for most people?

A keyboard? They make keyboards for iPads, Android, and Windows tablets.

The OS? That's not a terribly hard thing to change.

I would venture to say that a tablet could replace a laptop for 80+% of
people. I type, browse the web, email, and program on my laptop. I tablet is
more than capable of that. I'm not often doing heavy processing or graphic-
intensive gaming, nor are many/most people.

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webwanderings
I think it shouldn't be surprising, or it shouldn't be called a prediction
because these are the people who influenced enough to have Apple create the
successful tablet.

