Designer Kevin Noki has introduced a chunk of Apple’s moveable computing historical past again to life, constructing a useful duplicate of the never-released Apple FlatMac design prototype by Hartmut Esslinger — a tool that might finally change into the fashionable iPad.
“This challenge has been a dream come true,” Noki says of the challenge, which delves deep into Apple’s historical past. “As a designer, I’ve all the time been impressed by groundbreaking ideas, and this time, I challenged myself to recreate one of the vital iconic and unrealized prototypes: Hartmut Esslinger’s Apple FlatMac.”
Esslinger, as a part of German design consultancy Frog Design, was a driving drive for Apple’s design language from the Apple IIc onwards — and whereas Esslinger wasn’t behind the design of the unique Macintosh, his design language can be used for the Macintosh SE and successive units via to Steve Jobs’ departure and the founding of subsequent for which Esslinger would additionally present the economic design.
These, nonetheless, are all units which truly launched — however the gadget that has caught Noki’s eye is one thing that by no means hit store cabinets: the so-called “FlatMac” design prototype. “Designed by Harmut in 1984,” Noki explains, “it was basically the preliminary imaginative and prescient for what turned the iPad. Sadly, it remained an idea — and just a few non-functional fashions have been produced.”
The keyboard makes use of 3D-printed keycaps on a customized PCB, with water-slide switch printing. (📷: Kevin Noki)
Noki set himself the problem of constructing his personal FlatMac, however went one step additional than Esslinger and colleagues by deciding it ought to be useful — although powered by a contemporary Raspberry Pi 4 single-board laptop working a Macintosh emulator and related to a USB floppy drive quite than period-appropriate {hardware}.
The outside casing of the FlatMac copy is 3D-printed, with a customized keyboard PCB designed in KiCad mimicking the structure of Esslinger’s non-functional prototype. An off-the-shelf multi-voltage energy financial institution, shucked from its housing, gives energy for on-the-go use, and the similarly-modified USB floppy disk is positioned precisely the place the unique would have been. A Teensy microcontroller working the TMK firmware hyperlinks the keyboard PCB to the Raspberry Pi, and the a touchscreen show makes use of components salvaged, appropriately sufficient, from an iPad pill.
What would have been a black-and-white show is upgraded to paint, because of a donor iPad. (📷: Kevin Noki)
Powered on, the duplicate FlatMac boots straight into the Macintosh emulator, loading software program from native storage or the floppy drive and even supporting an exterior ADB mouse — whereas the colour touchscreen show gives a contemporary twist, even supporting a stylus as an enter machine, and the upgraded enter/output capabilities extends to supporting an exterior HDMI show.
The complete construct course of is documented within the video above and on Noki’s YouTube channel; a partial invoice of supplies is included, however Noki has not launched design information.
