The REAAAL origin of the chiclet style keyboard!!

Oh noes!!!

http://www.zock.com/8-Bit/D_C116.HTML

http://www.zock.com/8-Bit/D_VG8010.HTML

 

I don't get it. What's so special about those keyboards?

 

Apple! thats what hes talking about.

 

IT NOT BELONGS TO APPELL

 

I think that the Sinclair ZX80 predated those Commodores by about 5 years.

And don't forget the IBM PC Junior and TI 99/4A machines (shudder).

 

So in other words, Apple has resurrected a design concept that was chucked out by everyone esle years ago, but because Apple did it, now it is cool? Well, Apple does have a skill for taking other people's ideas ("Hey, how about using x86/x64 arch!" "A portable device you can put digital format music on? Brilliant!" "Oh, putting a radio in an MP3 player? No one's thought of that!"), claiming originality, and slapping the trendy badge on them. Bleh. Overpriced closed architecture garbage.

 

Actually Sony kind of brought it back specially with X505 series of few years back.

 

So Apple aren't even the first ones to revive it. I enjoy a good round of thunder stealing.

 

Uh, actually Sony was the first to resurrect it and then Apple used it almost exclusively for their laptops and keyboards. Honestly the chiclet style keyboard from Apple is not hype, its the best laptop keyboard that I've used.

Apple doesn't have original ideas, but what they do with ideas people already have come up with is what makes Apple a successful company.

Aside from the walkmen, portable music was nothing until the first iPod came along. The same can be said for smartphones. Never have we've seen such a BOOM in smartphones until the iPhone was released. Now every smartphone on the market has a touch interface.

Next up is the Apple Tablet. Tablets have been around forever, and if Apple is successful in releasing a compelling tablet, it will yet be ANOTHER known idea taken to where other companies failed. This is how Apple has always done business and they are making buckets of money from it.

 

It's a nice keyboard but hardly the best. I'm a little disgruntled at the quality of the plastic (or lack thereof) which enabled me to wear a shiny spot on the space bar of my unibody MBP within a few hours of taking it out of the box.

I don't know how old you are, but I'm in my 30's. I had some sort of portable music player all throughout my teen years. Heck, I even had a Watchman. The portable cassette market of the 80's gave way to the portable CD player market of the 90's. I got my first portable CD player in 1991. I saw some guy with one at the gym the other day, what a nostalgia trip that was.

It's not that portable music wasn't "big," it's just that they weren't these gimmicky, all-in-one, big-deal things they are now. Oh wow, you have a portable music player.. it wasn't something to brag about.

 

Apple sells an image more than a product. http://makeuseof.com/tech-fun/images/iproduct-feel-special.jpg

At this point, Apple is almost more of a marketing/PR firm than a technology company.

Oh, and I beg to differ about smartphones. There were an aweful lot of BlackBerries, Palms, and even Windows Mobile phones out there before Apple. Apple just opened them up to the consumer market more. However, Apple still doesn't really compete in the business market.

 

We all knew Apple wasn't the source of the chiclet keyboard.

Heck, they're not even the source of the the unibody design on the Macbook Pros either. In fact, they're not the source of half their designs, but then again, lots of companies aren't either.

 

Haha I just wanted to show everyone that Apple AND Sony did not invent this type of keyboard. This isn't an Apple bashing thread.

 

Well portable music has always been around and I do remember the portable CD player and cassettes, but the digital music boom happened around the iPod times.

If you are a business making products that are consumer friendly with interfaces and software to drive that product you BETTER not just be a technology company. Otherwise we'd still be using MS-DOS. What people don't get is that you need designers and engineers to work together create a successful product. Apple has shown this success most notably through their iPhone OS. I can see how Apple may seem like selling an image, but most of that I believe comes from the fanatical fans themselves.

I did state in my previous post that there were an awful lot of smartphones on the market before the iphone. Blackberries, Palm, Windows mobile, none of them opened up the market to the consumer level. None paved the way for smartphones being common place.

Now look at what happened after iPhone's release. Now we got Blackberry Storm incorporating touch for the first time ever, we got Palm creating a brand new OS, and Windows mobile everywhere have gone touch and a new Windows mobile 7 on the way. We also got Android appstore and Microsoft trying to launch the Marketplace.

It happened to the iPod in music, its happening to the iPhone now for smartphones, I'm not so sure about the Apple Tablet, but this is how Apple works and why they're so successful. I hate Apple's closed system as much as the next guy, but they have broadened up so many roads of the digital age that would of remained narrow and stagnant.

 

Well you realize that it's hard to be 100% original nowadays. Even if you think of something neat, there's bound to have been someone, somewhere, at some time that thought of something similar enough before you so that people would say it wasn't your idea first.

As long as there's no patent on the idea, nobody really cares whether or not you got it first.

 

Very interesting info Forever Melody. I thought it was Sharp Zaurus who had the first chiclet keyboard but it seem you are right.

I'll close this thread as we don't need another Apple debate.