Mac Air Tablet Mockup From Isamu Sanada
7:57 pm, May 6th, 2008, Leander Kahney
Isamu Sanada, the Japanese photographer who makes Mac mockups, has created a new design for a tablet Mac that blends the iPhone with the MacBook Air subnotebook. He calls it the Mac Air.
According to a rough translation of his site, the Mac Air also doubles as a desktop.
It hooks to a wireless keyboard and uses a wireless Time Capsule-like docking station as a hard drive. The dock includes a SuperDrive for playing and burning Cds/DVDs.
It boots into the iPhone operating system when a tablet, and OS X when used as a desktop.
It’s a great idea, but will Apple ever make such a device? Maybe. Sanada has once or twice correctly predicted Apple’s products in the past. As previously reported:
Isamu Sanada is a photographer by trade, but an Apple designer by calling.
Sanada is an amateur designer of fantasy Macintoshes. His Applele website is a popular showcase for dozens of speculative designs for future Apple machines.
In fact, Sanada is so adept at mimicking Apple’s look, he created a design for a new laptop that predicted Apple’s distinctive Titanium PowerBook G4 months before it came out.
Link to Sanada’s Mac Air mockup.
Sanada hasn’t made a new design for many months. No word why he’s returned to making fantasy Macs. His email simply said:
“I made a new image. Please enjoy it.”
Posted by Leander Kahney in iPod | Comment on this article
This thing makes so much more sense to me than the Macbook Air. From what I’ve read though, Apple’s inkwell technology is a bit behind the curve in terms of handwriting recognition relative to what’s available on windows. As cool as multitouch is, I think you would need to allow for a stylus-type input in addition to any multi-touch input methods. That would mean that Apple would need to catch up a bit on their inkwell technology for something like this to be viable.
Being able to auto-detect it’s orientation and switch views appropriately like the iPhone does would be another crucial component to a product like this. I also really like the concept of integrating the stand into the design. The tablets we have at work require being locked into this obnoxiously large docking station to be used in the manner portrayed in the last few pics. What a great design though, my hat’s off to Mr. Sanada.
Scott, on May 6th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
Love the look of it… I absolutely, positively do not want it to attempt to be a full fledged computer in it’s own right (as the Macbook Air trys and fails to do).
Note to Steve: Accessory, Accessory, Accessory.
Leigh McMullen, on May 7th, 2008 at 5:50 am
I’ve seen pictures of this of the last few days and my immediately response was ugly, my second look told me ugly, and my most current look at this says ugly.
Why the wedge shape? I don’t picture Apple doing this shape at all. It should be rounded not a wedge.
OlsonBW, on May 8th, 2008 at 7:03 am
I love this concept. I think we’re headed toward laptops which access their hard drives remotely by wi-fi, and this is a great transition toward that.
Allan, on May 8th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
I’d like any tablet to have a stylus and pressure sensitive display so it could be used as a sketch book. This looks hot tho.
Camperton, on May 8th, 2008 at 3:23 pm