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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.
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.
The iPad(TM) is really boring.
Boring like minimalist music. Boring like Gregorian chant. Beautiful, and fascinating for its exploration of something more distinct in a single tone - but boring like an appliance.
But is it art? ;^)
Ryan Fenton
Hardly. Digitizing tables date back to the 1950s.
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?
And these two are related how?
Another day another apple slashvert. How very fucking tedious.
Hi Steve!
I read the article. There isn't much overlap between the two devices in terms of functionality.
No, what it means is that the Acolyte Tony Diaz has re-discovered a precious holy relic from the hallowed First Golden Era of the God-Emperor Steve Jobs, (May the Holy Kidney Protect Him). Such a relic proves the Divine authenticity of the Miracle of iPad and serves as a reminder of the omniscience of the God-Emperor Steve Jobs, (May the Holy Kidney Protect Him).
And yet, apple didnt expand on the graphics tablets and now another company (wacom) holds the industry standard and specialises in input devices for artists and graphic designers. I don't deny apple's innovation here, I just am curious as to how that came about.
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.
Futurist Traditionalism
Decades ago I wrote a map digitizing app for the Mac II and that tablet, which in the mid-eighties I think had been rebranded as the MacTablet. I used LightSpeed Pascal (I was still in college.) It was cool. I even added a logarithmic feature for contour maps. The app would draw a picture of what you were tracing, inside a small window, while it streamed the digitized coordinates to another small window. Because I built it for engineers to use, it also had a recalibration feature during which the app auto-calculates the map scale. It let you save the image as a bitmap file, and you could spool the coordinate stream to a flat file.
That was back when I rocked.
"Crude and slow, clansman. Your attack was no better than that of a clumsy child."
The Summagraphics Bitpad was used as the graphical input device for the Perq. Rather than run a silly paint program, it allowed us to use the Perq as a CAD workstation to design the Perq II. Prior to that time most schematics were drawn on paper and netlists generated by hand. Graphical design saved countless hours and mistakes.
The Bitpad was fantastic compared to some of the other input devices of the day.