Apple and Palm's new iPhone?

April 12, 2001 7:31 PM

Apple and Palm's new iPhone? Apparently this is just a mockup, and its a little bit unclear what all the little buttons do, but I still want one.
posted by bshort (12 comments total)

I think it's a mockup in the sense of 'wouldn't it be cool if someone made a PalmOS device that looked like this?' This site looks like it's even less connected to reality than MacOSRumors.
(personally, I think it's pretty fugly. All the graphite-and-ice look of a G4, but none of the design sense.)
posted by darukaru at 7:36 PM on April 12, 2001

Uh... yeah. Usually these sites are from Japanese guys with way too much time on their hands and a working knowledge of Photoshop; the only difference here is that the guy's Norwegian. The product's not any more real.
posted by m.polo at 7:47 PM on April 12, 2001

My favorite part is that the Palm screen is reversed. If this were to be something real they would have at least gotten that right.

Alas, the device you see above is just a mock-up - although a very, very good-looking one.

Heh....
posted by stew560 at 8:20 PM on April 12, 2001

Yeah, that's true stew560. :) A couple other things that are weird:

- Where's the speaker? ...under the Apple logo??
- the phone/calendar/etc buttons (left of the screen) have always been beneath the display on all the palmOS devices i've seen. the layout on this "mock-up" breaks that standard (and programs that rely on it).
- where are the scroll up/down buttons (common on all palm devices)?
- how fucking huge does this thing look?
posted by pnevares at 8:49 PM on April 12, 2001

This is a fake, and it is a good one. If you taker a look at the phone you will notice that:

- The round part at the top is a G4 Cube speaker with an apple logo from the powerbook power supply.
- the screen housing is a cinema display
- the bottom end is an apple optical mouse
- the bits near the bottom on the sides are from the legs of a G4 tower.
and
- the grill above the screen housing in the image is from a Cube again.

All of the source photos can be found on the Apple site.

Great job with the Photoshop.
posted by DragonBoy at 11:16 PM on April 12, 2001

While clearly a fake, I have heard that Apple is developing a handheld device with Palm. I even saw a real prototype picture of it once . . .

I shouldn't have said anything. I hate to tease you all with something like that, and then not deliver with a link. I'll dig around and see if I can dig it up.
posted by aladfar at 11:37 PM on April 12, 2001

My favorite part is that the Palm screen is reversed. If this were to be something real they would have at least gotten that right.

Actually, this picture is what made me give up on the idea of a one-piece PDA/cellphone combo in any configuration. You may not have to stick the screen against your face to talk, but you still can't use the PDA part effectively while you're talking. You can't take notes on your conversation, you can't check your schedule, you can't play games while pretending that you give a damn what the guy on the other end is saying. Some sort of interconnectivity (wired or wireless) between cellphone and PDA would have its uses, and perhaps a headset-based configuration would work. I just can't see such a combo being particularly useful if you can't use the screen and the phone at the same time.

BTW, great autopsy, DragonBoy.
posted by harmful at 6:25 AM on April 13, 2001

Hey, I have most of the devices they photoshopped this thing from - does this mean I can make my own?
posted by lileks at 6:58 AM on April 13, 2001

harmful:

you can use the PDA while on the phone if the phone has (a) a speakerphone and/or (b) a headset jack.
posted by MattD at 7:25 AM on April 13, 2001

Hey, I have most of the devices they photoshopped this thing from - does this mean I can make my own?

Hey man, go ahead. But if what DragonBoy says is true:

- the screen housing is a cinema display

That's gonna be a BIG cell phone!
posted by stew560 at 7:47 AM on April 13, 2001

Since earphones for cell phones are the trend (now required in cars in certain places), does anyone market a cell phone which just dispenses with the part you put up to your ear? Seems that way, you could have a phone which actually was the size of a PDA...
posted by ParisParamus at 8:18 AM on April 13, 2001

Actually, Brennan, the answer to your problem is the Bluetooth headset from Ericsson... which will talk to the Linux-based PalmPalm handheld, with 3G wireless... which is enough to do Voice over Data... which if you can get the data for flat rate...

I'll shut up now.

Click around though, folks, to the Samsung smartphone story on that site. Designwise, it seems to get right everything Kyocera/Qualcomm got wrong.

Twice.

Except Bluetooth. It still doesn't have Bluetooth.
posted by baylink at 9:45 AM on April 13, 2001