[Macworld]

Post your comments for The unusual world of Mac prototypes here

[LeTap]

I always wanted one of these:

http://www.erik.co.uk/ans/

[bastion]

I don't know that the SE really fits in this list. As the article notes, this was a fairly routine practice with a practical value. The SE shipped and there was no expectation of actually offering an SE with a see-through case. The other items are legitimately avenues that were being pursued and were then dropped. You could put in the PenLite to replace it. A convertible notebook/tablet from about 20 years ago.

[Swift2]

Come on, the only prototypes we want to see are of the Apple TV of the future, or the anti-gravity belt or solar-powersd implant iPhone.

[Swift2]

Oh, and from the half-printer, half-Mac and call it the Paladin just shows us how out of touch management was during that era.

[bastion]

Swift2, on 23 November 2012 - 10:19 AM, said:

Oh, and from the half-printer, half-Mac and call it the Paladin just shows us how out of touch management was during that era.

In the mid-90s that probably would've been a reasonably popular SOHO unit.

[DocNo]

Quote

In the mid-90s that probably would've been a reasonably popular SOHO unit.

Oh please - even Coleco with the Adam knew to keep the printer separate from the computer. Locating the power supply in the printer so that if you lost it the computer was worthless was a little daft... but there's a good reason that even the completely out of touch mid 90's Apple didnt release the computer/printer/toaster all in one...

[bastion]

DocNo, on 25 November 2012 - 04:25 PM, said:

Quote

In the mid-90s that probably would've been a reasonably popular SOHO unit.

Oh please - even Coleco with the Adam knew to keep the printer separate from the computer. Locating the power supply in the printer so that if you lost it the computer was worthless was a little daft... but there's a good reason that even the completely out of touch mid 90's Apple didnt release the computer/printer/toaster all in one...

Not only did I know people that owned Adams, I have a coworker who was on that project. It was one of the reasons he left Coleco; the oddity of being told by an engineer at that time that "we have the most advanced tape-based storage on the market" made him step back and reevaluate where the company was going.

I don't think the situation is comparable. The Adam was an extremely entry level home computer of the early/mid 80s. The Paladin was a business device about ten years later. You could just as well say that in the mid-80s we knew enough to keep the printer, the scanner, the copier and the TELEX machine separate from each other, but for the last several years multi-function devices that include at least the first 3 - and often FAX - are quite normal.

[jeshortal]

Fascinating! Its good to learn history!

[Sack36]

Another Mac that made it to market but nobody seems to know about it is the Quadra 630 extended. It was exactly the same as the 630 but with twice the PCI slots. It took me three days with Apple to finally get the specs on it. I had an edge. I owned one so they couldn't say it didn't exist.

Apparently they did a run of about 100 of them, then decided to pull the extra slots.

[bastion]

Sack36, on 26 November 2012 - 10:56 PM, said:

Another Mac that made it to market but nobody seems to know about it is the Quadra 630 extended. It was exactly the same as the 630 but with twice the PCI slots. It took me three days with Apple to finally get the specs on it. I had an edge. I owned one so they couldn't say it didn't exist.

Apparently they did a run of about 100 of them, then decided to pull the extra slots.

I'm not sure what machine you had, but what you've written here makes no sense. Twice zero is still zero. The Quadra 630 had no PCI slots. Nor did any other Mac for the next year or so. They also wouldn't have done a production run of 100 units.

I kind of wonder if you're actually thinking of a PowerMac 6300. There was a variant of that which was never officially sold to the US market under that name (it was as the Performa 6360) and had one PCI slot (while the PowerMac 6300 that was sold in the US had none).

[firecatstef]

If I'm remembering correctly there was talk of producing transparent Macs from time to time but the materials available weren't able to pass FCC muster (produced too much interference)

http://gizmodo.com/5...s-imac-graphite