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How Star Trek Artists Imagined the iPad... 23 Years Later
MorderVonAllem submitted an incredibly cool article about the computers and set design of Star Trek. If you are into that sort of thing, you're going to really like this one. It says "There are a lot of similarities between Apple's iPad and the mobile computing devices—known as PADDs—used in the Star Trek universe. Ars spoke to designers Michael Okuda, Denise Okuda, and Doug Drexler to find out the thinking and inspiration behind the PADD and how closely the iPad represents a real-life incarnation of that dream."
you must be old here...
I can't predict the future, but I'm quite sure Steve's Job's brain, submerged in a nutrient-rich emulsion, will be wheeled out at the 2200 WWDC to announce the new iPad.
Perhaps it depends on the level at which you judge things. For me, for something to "resemble an iPad," it needs to have a third party inserted between the developer and the user.
Geordi: "Hey, what if we reroute The Borg's root command through the subspace neutrino beam? Their ship will collapse like a house of balloons!"
Riker: "Checkmate!"
Picard: "Mr. Data, make it so."
Data: "Aye aye, captain." [fingers blur on PADD, then stop. Data just sits there.]
Picard: "Mr. Data?"
Data: "Yes, captain?"
Picard: "Are you ready?!"
Data: "Waiting for software approval by the Ferengi, sir."
Picard: *sigh* "Initiate auto-destruct sequence."
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
There are terrain and weather apps right now. Two out of three!
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Well, Steve Jobs does have big ears...
Whereas Microsoft Courier is exactly what the PADD would have been had the Pakleds designed it.
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
Maybe Al wouldn't have needed to beat on Ziggy all the time on Quantum Leap if he wouldn't cover up the antenna with his cigar hand.
nah, the drm just didnt allow it to be downloaded anywhere else but astrometrics.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
"A PADD was a clipboard, just future-visioned. It served exactly the same purpose, plot-wise, as all the paper in the new Battlestar Galactica being octagonal - it show you you were in a different world."
Agreed. Seems to me that it would be obvious that future technology would evolve beyond using dead trees with black powder stuck to it.
The technology that annoyed me the most about Star Trek and TNG was cameras. Here you're sending people over to strange ships and planets and asking "What's going on? Can you describe to me what you see?" Give me a break! 400 years in the future and they can't envision wireless video, but wireless audio is everywhere.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Tossing it onto your desk like Picard without worrying about the thing Shatnering ?
Oh, to casually toss Picard onto my desk...
The iPad is EXACTLY what the PADD would have been had the Ferengi designed it instead of someone in the Federation.
Yes! Although the Ferengi would have gone the other way on the "Freedom from Porn" thing. They would have banned all apps that feature women in clothing.
I don't know how many years on this Earth I got left. I'm going to get real weird with it. - Frank Reynolds
Trek also predicted g0atse when Spock looked into that secret glowing box and went nuts.
Table-ized A.I.
Another possibility is that, like iPads, Star Trek PADDs could not multitask well or have multiple windows showing at the same time. The piles of PADDs may be an easier way to have a whole bunch of reference materials open and available at the same time.
"Frequently wrong, never in doubt."
I thought that was the early appearance of the creative use of sea shells?
...Data: "Aye aye, captain." [fingers blur on PADD, then stop. Data just sits there.]
Picard: "Mr. Data?"
Data: "Yes, captain?"
Picard: "Are you ready?!"
Data: "Custom software deployed sir. Enemy ship collapsing"
How is this possible?
Because of course they are members of the iPhone Enterprise development program and can thus enjoy in-ship distribution... :-)
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Don't worry. We're having a heated argument about the capabilities of fictional devices in Star Trek. That's pretty much the definition of old school Slashdot.
Of course if Amiga had made a tablet running BeOS the late nineties would be back and in effect.