1979 Apple Graphics Tablet vs. the iPad

CWmike writes "When Apple launched the iPad earlier this year, it was the culmination of fans' long wait for the company to enter the tablet market. There's no doubt the iPad is a revolutionary device. But in 1979, an earlier generation of Apple users used a different kind of Apple tablet, back when the word meant something else entirely, writes Ken Gagne. The Apple Graphics Tablet was designed by Summagraphics and sold by Apple Computer for the Apple II personal microcomputer. (Summagraphics also marketed the device for other platforms as the BitPad.) To be clear, this tablet was not a stand-alone computing device like the iPad. Instead, it was an input device for creating images on the Apple II's screen, and it predated the Apple II's mouse by six years. Apple II fan Tony Diaz had an Apple Graphics Tablet on hand at last month's KansasFest, an annual convention for diehard Apple II users. He and Gagne, the event's marketing director, compared and contrasted Apple's original tablet with the iPad, snapping photos as they went." The contrived comparison is as silly as it sounds — but it's a fine excuse to look at some ahead-of-its-time gear, even in the form of an annoying slide show.

Comments

Poor comparison

[Tubal-Cain]

Why compare the AGT to the iPad? Pretty much the only things they have in common is a touch sensitive surface. It's closer in function to a Wacom.

Re:Poor comparison

[MichaelSmith]

Light pens from those days are probably closer to a modern touch sensitive screen.

Re:Poor comparison

[Joce640k]

Why not compare it to, say, the Apple Newton. That would make a lot more sense.

Re:Poor comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with this kind of rhetoric is that Apple redefines "core functionality" until it's pretty meaningless. They redefine "core functionality" so that it excludes things that even a 1979 Apple was capable of doing. That's why "geeks" give the new Apple so much grief. They have UNNECESSARILY castrated technology in the name of consumer accessability.

They're like the anti-Apple when compared to 1979.

So let me get this straight...

[Gordo_1]

Apple had a crude input device made for them in 1979 that was called a "tablet" because its shape resembled... um, a tablet. Coincidentally, Apple recently introduced a mobile computing device that is also tablet-shaped.

Slow news day, eh?

Relation?

[bart416]

And these two are related how?

Re:Relation?

[txoof]

Ugg, and there's 10 minutes of my life I'll never get back. I thought that I was going to learn something, or perhaps gain some insight into the design process and it's consistency over decades of products. Alas, Computer World shows us once again that all they can write is poorly reported fluff. The article just a bunch of straws grasped at in desperation of imitating journalism.

Re:Ahead of its time?

[tyrione]

Hardly. Digitizing tables date back to the 1950s.

How many consumer digitizing tablets were available back in the 1950s?

Hardly an apples to apples comparison

[rcb1974]

I read the article. There isn't much overlap between the two devices in terms of functionality.

When Apple was a hacker company

[hessian]

Back in 1979, Apple was a hacker company, breaking new ground.

Now they're a boutique. Their products aren't technological innovations, but re-use of existing technology in more comfy or trendy ways.

What computer science breakthroughs occurred with the mp3 player, or tablet?

With comfy/trendy products, you buy status symbols for conspicuous consumption. "Who are you better than?" is the eternal question of the fearful, and buying an iPad makes you for at least six weeks seem a lot cooler than your neighbor without one.

Re:Ahead of its time?

[Mikkeles]

Ouuu! I smell a potential patent: it's a consumer digitizing tablet! Like, totally different, boyo!