Apple has a lot of gadgets that have not received recognition or are simply ahead of their time. Basically, this happened a very long time ago, when the company was looking for itself and trying to make money on everything.
But already in the 2000s, Apple was a fairly independent corporation, trying new things, looking for itself.
So, years later, it turns out that the company already had interesting developments that were not released into circulation, and some devices could look different than we know them.
It is difficult to imagine what could have been, if the Apple iPod had been released in exactly the form in which it was planned – you see, and the folding iPhone would have existed for a long time.
First frameless Apple iPhone
iPhone X is considered one of the most breakthrough devices from Apple: this year it will be 5 years old, and the company has not yet come up with anything more original.
True, by that time similar Android smartphones already existed on the market, but who remembers them?
However, the very idea of a frameless device is not new – this has already been conceived and possibly developed by the company, but not released into circulation. Surprisingly, this is not about the iPhone, because then it was not even in the plans.
Frameless iPod is cool, but risky for those times
Apple fans know who Tony Fadell is. Let me remind you, this is a former Apple executive and creator of the iPod.
Traditionally, such a high-ranking Apple employee not only has secrets in his arsenal, but also some prototype devices that he used for his upcoming book “Build”.
So, among them was the iPod Nano, which was released in 2005. The photo shows that one of the layouts has an elongated frameless design without a Click Wheel, which is extremely unusual for those times. Of course, they are very much like modern iPhones.
The mockups were 3D printed to get an idea of how the device would feel, Fadell said, but it was these mockups that made the project real.
Despite the fact that the layout was frameless and had a screen on the entire front panel , I would not begin to believe that it could have been released in those years. But it could well come in handy when releasing the iPhone X. Now I’ll prove it.
What does an iPod look like?
Let’s start with the fact that in 2005 Apple was a strong, but not so self-sufficient company. Steve Jobs in those years was trying with might and main to join Motorola in order to gain experience in the phone industry.
Then, frankly, Apple definitely threw the phone manufacturer, and the well-known ROKR E1 was created carelessly: Steve Jobs saw it a few minutes before the presentation, as a result of which the phone failed and was sold at an unprecedented discount.
But the iPod nano took off, which was introduced on the same day, becoming a truly legendary device.
Even if the layout was useful, it was many years later when the iPod was released in 2012
If you remember, he had a completely small screen – only one and a half inches. Putting a touchscreen in it is a truly stupid decision.
In those years, there were no capacitive touch screens, only resistive ones that could be controlled with a stylus, fingernail, or other hard object.
For owners of the iPod nano, it’s a real suicide, for example, poking at the screen with a stylus on the way to work or doing it while jogging.
In the 2000s and early 10s, the iPod was popular precisely because of its compactness.
By the way, Apple was the first to introduce a capacitive screen with MultiTouch – in the iPhone 2G. And the first iPod with a touch screen was the sixth generation iPod nano, and this is only 2010.
Most of all, the layout from Tony Fadell’s photo resembles the 7th generation iPod, and even that has a home button. In general, there is something in common with the layout, but not all the same.
The presence of such layouts at Apple once again suggests that the company was not afraid to experiment at that time.
On the other hand, similar layouts of iPod players indicate that in the 2000s, manufacturers had more imagination and were not afraid to experiment: remember at least the Nokia 3650 with a wildly uncomfortable keyboard and other devices from the Finnish brand, which, at times, did not differ in their practicality, but looked extremely original.
In any case, Apple did not take risks and release a device with a frameless screen, postponing it for the future.
Perhaps, if such a gadget had come out 1-2 years earlier, users would not have appreciated it, but in 2017 the iPhone X turned out to be very useful.
