Here’s the idea: That Apple II, C64, Newton, 486, whatever. Can we make a brand new Thing now and maybe add a few newer things? I ask because it seems strange to me. Early era home computers, consoles seem to have lasted thirty or so years. New material? My nook touch got a six inch drop and bumped against the kitchen table and breaks permanently.
Plus older era technology has simpler architecture and at least to me tends to have a more tactile feel to it a greater solid feel and heft.
I’m not saying ‘build a brand new thirty year apple I’. I’m saying ‘can we take the things that were good about what purpose built technology existed back then and make something new?’
Think of the MIT DiY phone and apply it to other things. I dunno really I guess sort of the anti ‘everything in one’ concept. Don’t get me wrong I love all-in-one as a concept, but what about those that don’t want everything in one? Why not a wifi enabled terminal picture frame for pictures/weather/rss? Or an e-ink PDA type thing?
Is there even a market for this? I know there’s a healthy hobbiest thing for barebones hack your old stuff to do something interesting. What about something purpose built taking advantage of newer things? IE a 486 on a chip that runs from a box the size of a router that has USB so you can plug a thumb-drive in and use an sd card as an internal harddrive so you can have something to run REALLY Old Things. I know dosbox, but that’s just an example.
Look at the alphasmart keyboard. Purpose built technology that is a keyboard that you can type on away fro ma computer then hit a button after plugging it in to send the text to… whatever. No need for a windows thing or an osx thing and that’s genius, it’s OS independent (granted windows does get a special program to do something to do direct file transfers but still base functionality can work on ANYTHING (even smartphones and tablets)
Is ther a market for this concept? Any interest at all?