An Australian has posted a video taken from WALT, an Apple prototype released in 1993.
In 1993, we were obviously not talking about a smartphone yet. In 1993, mobile phones and tablets were not yet mainstream.
In 1993, Apple was at the bottom of the abyss, and it is not his MessagePad under the brand Newton that will revive the machine. A few months before, during the traditional MacWorld Expo, the company had presented WALT, a kind of monochrome tablet with a stylus. It will remain in the prototype stage, but an Australian has put their hands on it, and he unveils this 26-year-old object.
WALT is for Wizzy Active Lifestyle Telephone and it is a ” digital slate ” supposed to make it possible to telephone, send faxes, to reach its contacts and to consult its bank accounts. You can even change the ringtone, and this ancestor of the iPhone and iPad has a microphone and a speaker.
Connected to mains
It is found that the screen is tactile and that the stylus is functional. Everything is obviously slow, but there are some great features for the time, such as writing recognition and the name of the person calling. On the other hand, this good WALT was not portable. It only worked on mains and did not have a battery.
It is more like an advanced phone with a large screen, as we will find later in business. Under the hood, no components dedicated to mobility but a processor of the computer as it is the Motorola 68000 CISC There must be 2 MB of RAM, a small hard disk and SCSI ports and VGA. All animated by an adapted version of MacOS 6, which was not quite young but could still do the trick.