He Built Apple's 1980s iPad Concept [video]

It&#x27;s absolutely <i>insane</i> how far we&#x27;ve come in DIY&#x2F;Maker capabilities. Short of making your own ICs (thankfully a rapidly developing space), this is an incredible demonstration of what&#x27;s now achievable by a single person.

I misunderstood the title and thought this was going to be a talk or interview with the person who came up with the concept back then, rather than someone building an approximation of the object today. Still interesting, I guess, but I can’t help but feel disappointed. I’d rather have a piece of insight into history than a mute video of something I can only react with “cool” and then never touch, try, hold, experience, or think about again.

Watched it all. Brilliant maker video. Impressed by the dedication to hours of sanding. Worried he would saw off his fingers trimming the FDD :-o. Keyboard is particularly impressive as is using off the shelf parts for IO and getting the 3d printed case to fit them perfectly. Floppy ejection using steping motor is a fun touch. Love it. Also all the tight tolerences!<p>I am looking into making a product for fun 3d printing, rpi etc but it&#x27;ll be 1% of the sophistication of this.

That keyboard is so nostalgic. Reminds me of the Apple 2C that we had in the computer room at my grade school.

Like a @Nanoraptor concept art, except real…

The experience of this video is very reminiscent of the kind of experience one can have with the ClockworkPi [1] series of devices - I have both the original DevTerm and 3 of new uConsoles, and I had a lot of fun getting them assembled. Time to set up a Mac Classic emulator on the uConsole and get my own &#x27;next generation Apple Mac Classic&#x27; machine, in my pocket ..<p>[1] - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.clockworkpi.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.clockworkpi.com</a>

It&#x27;s awesome job but what ruined the whole thing is to placard a sticker on the front bezel instead of 3d-printing and painting a rainbow Apple logo on the bezel

I remember seeing the first mac in my life around 90 (I was in Brazil, crazy import laws made macs insanely rare there, as the market was completely dominated by government protected companies doing PC clones and a sizable market of small PC builders working mostly from smuggled parts that didn&#x27;t need to pay the outrageous import tarifs)<p>It was something for me out of a science fiction movie compared to the PC running DOS. Every single motherfucking detail seemed to have been carefully thought of.<p>This was in the home of girlfriend who had a rich journalist father (another relic from the 90s) and was able to import his macs via some government contacts, I think.<p>We would eventually break up, and it would take me another 10 years to finally get a mac again, now this time, a G3 laptop.<p>Whatever people say, I am still in love with the Mac. You don&#x27;t forget your first loves so easily.

Some related reference points when discussing tech-trajectory groupthink:<p>- The Newton was panned, derided, even scorned<p>- Cell phones in the 90s were frowned upon as Rolex equivalents for douchebags

Highly recommend the documentary on General Magic. They were actually trying to build the iPhone as early as 1989 (and into the 90s). My former boss Meghan Smith was part of that team, she loved it — and so many Silicon Valley companies came out of that project. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=uTdyb-RWNKo" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=uTdyb-RWNKo</a>

Gives me Atari ST vibes ... I loved that machine.