From a rare Apple Lisa computer to the original rainbow-colored signs from the Cupertino offices there have been some great Apple items up for auction as of late. Now you can add “rare Mac prototype” to that list.
A prototype model made out of painted foam, this alternate Macintosh LC model was built in 1989 by Apple’s Industrial Design Group and Matrix Product Design (which later became IDEO). Unlike the actual Mac LC that shipped it has a vertically-oriented screen: possibly targeted toward the business world, rather than the artistic, publishing and educational markets that the Mac traditionally sold to at the time.
It shows that — years before the portrait-oriented iPhone became Apple’s most popular product — the company was quite serious about switching the look of computer monitors as we know it: a move that could have had massive implications had it been followed through on.
It wasn’t the only sneak peak the world got of vertical monitors either. A company called Radius produced a vertically-oriented display for Apple called the Radius Full Page Display, which was available for the Macintosh Plus as well as the Mac II.
The prototype Mac goes up for auction next week from Bonhams. It’s expected to fetch between $1,200-1,800.
Source: Bonhams
Via: Gizmodo
