2y ago

The Apple Jonathan: A Very 1980s Concept Computer That Never Shipped

This concept envisioned a computer that would expand with the needs of the user, through the use of modular components

https://512pixels.net/2024/03/apple-jonathan-modular-concept/

16 comments

That looks super cool!
Shit, I really want one now!
That's 100% my aesthetic!!
There were no cables.
Okay that’s pretty interesting.
- Except the ones on the mouse, and speakers, and presumably at least a power cord.
  
  no
anyone know of anything similar which actually exists? this is pretty cool
- These industrial PC may be the closest thing available to buy now https://www.advantech.com/en-us/products/modular-ipc/sub_574d73d3-adfe-4619-a50e-cac6dc597e83
- The closest is the Convergent NGEN, but the one more people may be familiar with would be the TI 99/4a sidecar system.
- Sort of... But it's very different than a computer, it's called a Programmable Logic Controller and it's used in industrial applications. Best game I've ever seen one run was Doom.
- Plan9 is sleeping. It works great and is actively developed, but I think it will remain a research OS. People/companies don't want to buy a really effective solution they want a pinky promise from another company. We'll eventually get embed windows on risc machines and it'll suck.
  Cluster computers will still be discrete tho. OP is aesthetic and cool. future computers will be piles of servers and silly iot devices and silly smartphones
Surprisingly, I had not heard of this. Here's another article:
https://www.storiesofapple.net/the-jonathan-computer.html
This really looks like the iOmega logo.
- Now that's a name I've not heard in a loooooong time.
  Edit: It probably is Iomega. That looks like a ZIP drive which was a technology owned by Iomega.
- That’s because it is. It’s a zip drive module for the concept.
- It plainly is. It even says "iomega ZIP!" above the slot.
  edit: The linked blog post has the render in higher resolution. There's some much deeper cuts in there.
Oh hey, one of my marginalia scribbles from the early 2000s had deep prior art. I was really hand-waving the capabilities of USB2... and picturing a vertical stack of fixed-footprint components. Back then, they would've needed an absolute shitload of pins, and these cases are friggin' massive if everything's sitting flat across a desk. Even the small stack in contemporary mockups is a fat cube.
It almost makes sense if it's a throwback to Altair / S100 backplanes. Like your motherboard is just a row of PCI slots. Raw bus. You could expand that by daisy-chaining units. Might even be able to hot-swap entire drives so long as the OS knows you're about to.

16 comments