[HN Gopher] Found at Goodwill: WebPad 1001 Prototype ___________________________________________________________________ Found at Goodwill: WebPad 1001 Prototype Author : farmerbb Score : 229 points Date : 2021-06-07 16:40 UTC (6 hours ago) (HTM) web link (huebnerob.com) (TXT) w3m dump (huebnerob.com) | [deleted] | guessbest wrote: | Sometimes it is a bad implementation that scares engineers from a | pioneering piece of technology. The windows 3.1 and 95 machines | with pen computing for windows were quite impressive and had a | long career in the medical field. | rkagerer wrote: | Boot 'er up and log into AOL. | misterbwong wrote: | For those that read this article, I _highly_ recommend you watch | the 1998 COMDEX video it references. [1] | | It's both sad and amazing that much of what we use today was | "coming soon" 23 years ago. | | [1] https://archive.org/details/CC1634COMDEX | gmiller123456 wrote: | It's really just a laptop without a keyboard, not really that | groundbreaking. The inflation calculator puts the advertised | price at almost $1000 today. So, probably the only reason it | was "coming soon" was there wasn't much of a market. It's a bit | disingenuous to pretend that "what we use today" is the same | thing. Today you can get the same functionality for about $100, | only with modern specs. Something of equivalent specs could | likely be gotten for free in a landfill. | prideout wrote: | Interesting how the device in the video looks slightly | different from the prototype. I love how the 3 LEDs in the top- | right animate like the front of the car in Knight Rider. | | Brings back memories to see Stewart Cheifet giving an | interview! | vidarh wrote: | In '98-'99 I was working on this one: | | https://metalab.at/wiki/Freepad | | While it's sad, one of my biggest lessons from it was that the | greatest genius with the iPhone and iPad was understanding the | market. | | Showing our tablet to techies worked great. People were excited | about the hardware, about the fact it ran Linux, about it | running Opera, and in general geeked out over it. | | But it was tethered to your house - few places had more than | 9600 bps GSM data, so it used a DECT extension (wifi was not | well established) to provide an internet connection tied to | your house. | | And it had a crappy resistive touch screen. Low resolution. Too | slow CPU. Too little RAM. Too little flash. | | Imagine a slow, heavy tablet with low resolution and janky | touch that you could take no further than your garden (if you | were lucky). | | So what we use today superficially looks like more modern | versions (that bezel size...) of things on offer back then. But | really a lot of the time while they worked well as prototypes, | we just didn't have the sense (or opportunity) to say "the time | isn't right for this product _yet_ , let's pick it up again | when x,y,z has happened." | buescher wrote: | I remember the guys from ViA Inc (not the same Via as the | processors) with their tablets tethered to their wearable | belt computer. They'd carry the tablet in a thigh holster. | ska wrote: | > greatest genius [...] was understanding the market. | | So many people doing product development work fail to | understand this to their detriment. | | You have to really screw up the engineering for it to kill a | product; a mediocre implementation is often times just fine, | especially if you are early. | | But if you are building the wrong thing, no amount of | implementation talent can save you. | Gravityloss wrote: | Newspad, envisioned in 1968: | http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=529 | jpfr wrote: | There were only 9 years between the 1998 Comdex and the iPhone | release in 2007. Of the 23 years we have had iPhones for 14 | years... Time perception is sometimes strange. | sjcoles wrote: | The 10 year span between 2000 and 2010 also had one of the | largest relative uplifts in transistor density. Going from | 130nm to 28nm was HUGE. | | I think people forget how quickly computers (especially in | efficiency!) improved from just 2000-2005 and again from | 2005-2010. | | Everything has leveled out a bit until recently. I think | we'll see another 5 year growth spurt once stacked designs | become common end of 2022ish. Though TSV vs EMIB is a whole | other argument/ball of wax. | Nition wrote: | The 1990s felt similarly insane. In 1991 we we had | Hovertank 3D, in 1993 we had Doom, in 1998 we had Half- | Life, and in 2000 we had Deus Ex. | | Go back nine years today and things don't feel that | different from now. People still buy Skyrim. | gamacodre wrote: | AR is probably in its "hovertank" era right now, after | years of interesting but largely useless demos. | | Someday we're going to wonder how anyone managed to | navigate or buy things in shops without realtime vision | markup. | fernly wrote: | > 28nm was HUGE | | ... so to speak. | bentcorner wrote: | > Everything has leveled out a bit until recently. | | You can say that again. I'm typing this on a desktop PC | powered by a Xeon that is approaching 10 years old and I | don't have any complaints. The cost of upgrading it over | the years has been modest. | | In comparison I have a Nexus 5 that is about the same age | and getting modern Android on it is a pain, the processor | really struggles and the physical device itself has seen | much better days. | mumblemumble wrote: | It's funny how much Apple dominates our memory. | | It was only a couple years between the 1998 Comdex and when I | got my first wifi PalmOS device with a color screen. At some | point my handheld devices acquired the ability to connect | directly to a cellular network, which was nice, and then | became _really_ nice with the iPhone. But I don 't think that | was ever a planned feature for the WebPad in the first place. | | The form factor is perhaps more interesting. We did have to | wait 12 years until Apple legitimized the idea of a device | along these lines that doesn't fit in a pocket. | tcse_12 wrote: | Isn't that the truth. I recently came across a meme that I | suspect will drive this point home for many in this | community. https://www.reddit.com/r/zelda/comments/mj9mim/loz | _ww_decide... | WalterBright wrote: | I fired up one of my old laptops from 1995 or so. It was a | cutting edge machine at the time, very nice. It seemed | completely unusable today. The tiny disk drive, for instance. | rootbear wrote: | For me it's the displays. Old laptops had terrible TN | panels and are painful to look at today. It makes them near | useless even for basic web browsing. | mschaef wrote: | The one that gets me is that ENIAC was (mostly) live in 1946 | and the IBM PC first shipped in 1981. | | The upshot of this is that there's more time between now and | the IBM PC than there is between the IBM PC and ENIAC. (18K | vacuum tunes, filled a room, and and was programmed via | physical rewiring, at least initlally.) | | > Time perception is sometimes strange. | | Agreed. | whizzwr wrote: | >there is even a .com button, so you don't have to type it out. | 1998? Magnificent. | bdcravens wrote: | Taking that into consideration, and the many ideas that failed | but are now succeeding, I wonder what businesses of today will | fail yet be fully implemented in 20 years? | grilledcheez wrote: | It seems web pages loaded at least as quickly in 1998 as in | 2021 | darknavi wrote: | I was about to say it looked like they loaded much faster. I | can't believe the bloat some websites have now. | hathawsh wrote: | From my perspective, screen technology was still being | developed. As shown in that archive.org video, CRTs were still | dominant at that time because they were much cheaper than large | full color LCDs. Those who could afford a large color LCD | generally preferred a laptop. Only after the price of color | LCDs came down did it make sense for people to buy tablets. | Precision multi-touch sensitivity also turned out to be a | turning point in adoption. | mywittyname wrote: | I imagine software was a big deal too. It's important not to | forget the magnitude of the advantage that iTunes delivered | for Apple. I think there's a sound argument to be made that, | without iTunes, that iOS devices would have never achieved | the same success. | | iTunes provided a platform to get a critical mass of users | accustom to buying $0.89-$20 digital downloads. Which made | the transition of iTunes into an "app store" a minor one for | users. They are there to buy music, but maybe in the future, | they might find some apps for their iPhone useful. | | Once Apple had a critical mass of developers building non- | trivial apps for the iPhone. It was a (kind of) baby step to | supporting tablets. | | Lots of people tried to invent the tablet. I think they | failed because of a lack of software, rather than poor | hardware. | rasz wrote: | In a similar vein A Rudimentary Analysis of 1992 HP Omnishare | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27426134 | | Windows 3 pen computing tablet for sharing documents over a phone | line. | nati0n wrote: | Not the first time such prototypes have shown up in thrift | stores. Notably this has happened with both Texas Instruments [1] | and Xbox [2] prototypes before. | | [1] | https://www.reddit.com/r/androiddev/comments/jrbnnh/i_found_... | [2] | https://www.reddit.com/r/gamecollecting/comments/t0d98/proto... | iforgotpassword wrote: | Every time this happens I'm curious how it ended up there. | Someone just bringing a box of junk to goodwill and actually | not caring, or is someone having an "oh shit" moment when they | read this because they didn't actually check the box that | thoroughly? The sadder story, and the older the tech the more | likely, is that the person who owned it isn't with us anymore, | and this is just someone cleaning up their house. | monocasa wrote: | If I had to guess that Xbox was a take home unit for testing | Xbox Live. The production date was about a year after retail | release, and a home unit for testing an early version of live | is the kind of thing that could end up in an ex's garage and | goodwilled. | eric__cartman wrote: | Maybe they know it's a prototype and purposefully | "accidentally sell it" just to see who ends up buying it. | Especially if it's a prototype for an old tech product, the | company that made it either doesn't exist anymore, or the | device is so old they just don't care. | flakiness wrote: | I live in Bay Area and like visiting Goodwill. | | Although I haven't seen anything as cool as the one in this | article, sometimes there are coffee mugs or T-shirts of failed | startups and large companies that are gone long time ago, or | lovely T-shirts that used to be sold in Cupertino Apple store. | dawnerd wrote: | Goodwill in the PNW is great too with lots of Microsoft "not | for sale" items. | HoppyHaus wrote: | I was able to get a MS t-shirt with the Windows Defender logo | on the front with "XP SP2" below it and "SECURITY" on the | back. | | It's absurd and I love it | incanus77 wrote: | Not as much prototype stuff (at least not yet for me) but | good stuff in Portland, too. I'm looking forward to getting | back post-COVID. | dawnerd wrote: | Early last year they had a handful of what appeared to be | pre-production Microsoft wireless display adapters at the | Baseline location. None of the info printed on it matched | retail units as far as I could tell. | | Prices have been crazy since they've re-opened. They have a | bunch of Apple devices in right now, some company dropped | off a ton. | flakiness wrote: | PNW? | CrazedGeek wrote: | Pacific Northwest: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Northwest | geocrasher wrote: | The Pacific NorthWet. Er, West. Seattle, etc. | deeblering4 wrote: | Pistachio Nut Waffles | quwert95 wrote: | "Pacific NorthWest". Basically, near Microsoft's main | Redmond campus. | bgoldste wrote: | Pacific Northwest, in the Northwestern US. Where | Microsoft/Amazon/others are | based...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Northwest | [deleted] | Far_Pig wrote: | Pacific northwest (USA) | fortran77 wrote: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PNW | squidbot wrote: | I miss Mike Quinn and Weird Stuff. I haunted them in my youth | and made all kinds of crazy projects. | smoyer wrote: | @gibberish - I've got a working PCMCIA Wi-Fi adapter in my junk | bin if you're interested. | deusum wrote: | Here's hoping the kernel supports it. | | Linux wifi was extra iffy back then iirc. Might need a | proprietary blob. | floren wrote: | An Orinoco card should be a safe bet (I've got a bunch | stashed in the closet, if OP needed one...) but you'll also | want to set up a separate wifi network so you can run 802.11b | without exposing your whole home. | ok123456 wrote: | Cisco cards also worked pretty well back then too. | satya71 wrote: | I was at National Semiconductor at the time. National used to own | quite a bit of the non-processor silicon on computers of the | time. When National bought Cyrix, Intel made sure National lost | all those sockets. | leeter wrote: | Seems like an LGR oddware candidate, along with other eyeopener | devices like this. | SavantIdiot wrote: | Wow, forgot all about Cyrix (and Nexgen): Circa 1996 they were a | legit threat to Intel, in fact, that's part of the reason why | Celeron was born. | | What a find! | nereye wrote: | And IDT/Centaur's WinChip, (later acquired by VIA, which then | shipped the C3, Nano, etc,). | | There is a good documentary on the Centaur, unfortunately no | comments when it came up in HN 3 years ago: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17471685. | evo wrote: | I always find these orphaned technological branches compelling, | in part, because it's so easy to point to the success story and | treat it like it was a singular invention. We hold up the iPhone | as a miracle but forget the Newton and PalmPilot. | | It's a good antidote to the narrative that either an idea is | sufficient for success, or that success is a function of the | idea. It's important, sure, but a fair bit of it is having the | timing, resources, and luck to throw ideas against the wall until | the world is ready for it, either due to cultural factors, | missing infrastructure now built out, or other underlying | technological evolutions meeting up together. | pram wrote: | Despite the hyperbole in the article characterizing it as the | first iPad, this thing is literally a low-budget x86 laptop | without a keyboard. I wouldn't exactly call it an orphaned | technological branch. | scarby2 wrote: | Not just the Newton and palmpilot but the the PocketPC phones | that came immediately before it. | | When the iPhone came out i had an HTC TyTN 2 which unlike the | iPhone could do turn by turn navigation, send SMS/MMS to | multiple recipients, and act as a 3g modem for my computer | while i was traveling. I also adored the pull out keyboard, | which until the advent of swype was by far the fastest input | method for a mobile device. | mywittyname wrote: | And Blackberry 7200s. | | RIM proved that there was demand for smartphones long before | the iPhone hit the market. | gandalfian wrote: | I had a remaindered tytn 2 as well. Even with a walk through | configuring the mobile internet was a bizzare tricky maze. On | an iPhone you just inserted a SIM, put in the APN and | everything worked? I can see why the iPhone won. | | Not to mention the irony that Microsoft quickly abandoned its | own platform so the only people keeping it a useable device | were Opera, Gmail and Google maps. The Microsoft browser | couldn't even cope with the Microsoft website. | thereddaikon wrote: | I'd even go so far as to say the idea is the easy part. Tablet | computers are an old idea, they had them on Star Trek TNG. | Engineers have been trying to make the PADD a reality pretty | much since the first episode. iPad wasn't the first attempt, it | was the last. | | It wasn't even Apple's first. And unlike the ones that came | before it actually did reasonably well at matching the | depiction. It got the relative size, weight and pick up and | just use experience. | | But nobody at Apple would have known the tech was ready if | people hadn't been trying over and over to do it for the | previous 20 years. | | New tech is almost never an original invention that came from | nowhere. The internet was built on decades of research | specifically into networking computers together but also built | on almost a century's worth of development into the phone | network. The experiments that lead to radar date to not long | after radio became practical. The Wright bro's weren't the | first to try an airplane, they were the first to make it work. | and so on. | | Its the implementation that matters. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-06-07 23:00 UTC)