Frog Design releases 1983 tablet prototypes

It's this week! It's almost a sure bet that we'll finally, after all of these years, see the Apple tablet unveiled this week, and to celebrate, Frog Design (the company responsible for many of Apple's designs back in the day) has given Wired some old shots of prototype tablets from the Cupertino company ... from 1983. Of course, Apple has released tablet-like devices before, and they've been thinking about this type of computer for a long time. But back in 1983, they apparently commissioned some concepts for an unreleased tablet called "Bashful" (so called because it was designed to work with the Snow White "industrial design language" that Apple used back then in the //c and other releases.

As you can see above, the tablet isn't exactly "elegant" by today's standards, but it is interesting how similar it actually is to many of today's smartphones and handhelds, considering that we're talking about almost 30 years ago now. One model had a floppy drive attached (which was gigantic), and apparently they even considered a version with a phone on it as well. We still don't know for sure what Apple's release this week will look like, but it's fascinating to think just how far back the planning for this week's unveiling actually went.
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