Apple has designed the tablet decades ago and was in the prototype mode which did not come out. The Newton Cadillac was Apple’s prototype tablet with a Stylus!
Apple, known for its innovation and understanding of the customer needs have been into a lot of research and making prototypes since its time of birth. And one such example we’ve already seen is the origin of the iPhone and where is came from in the past. We all know by this time that Apple was predicting Siri, FaceTime and the iPad back in 1987 and they weren’t wrong at all.
Similarly, the iPad is not the first tablet device that Apple has made. The Newton Cadillac was the First Tablet computer that Apple made in its Cupertino campus decades back. If you’d read the Biography of Steve Jobs, you’d have know by this time that Apple has a specialized group of engineers working in a Team called NewtonGroup, that worked towards building products of the future.
There were two teams in the NewtonGroup. One, working on the Tablet prototype. And the other working on a Handheld PDA device. The PDA device came out to the public and was known as the Newton MessagePad, which got killed after Steve returned to Apple. But the team that worked on the tablet prototype did not succeed in producing it to the public, but they had made a prototype, the Cadillac, that is still in Apple’s garage.
The Cadillac sports a 6.5 inches display and was 10.75 inches wide and 8.75 inches tall, covered with a rubber casing, a detachable battery module, a detachable and wired stylus, an IrDA port, a 3.5 inches headphone jack, modem, video out port, lanyard loop, hard keys for contrast and brightness adjustments and a PCMCIA slot!
Here are some of the pics for you to see about the Newton Cadillac.
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