How Star Trek Artists Imagined the iPad... 23 Years Later 324
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CmdrTaco
from the read-it-on-tos-yesterday dept.
from the read-it-on-tos-yesterday dept.
MorderVonAllem submitted an incredibly cool article about the computers and set design of Star Trek. If you are into that sort of thing, you're going to really like this one. It says "There are a lot of similarities between Apple's iPad and the mobile computing devices—known as PADDs—used in the Star Trek universe. Ars spoke to designers Michael Okuda, Denise Okuda, and Doug Drexler to find out the thinking and inspiration behind the PADD and how closely the iPad represents a real-life incarnation of that dream."
Re:Wow... (Score:2, Informative)
If you RTFA the Star Trek guys specifically mention the iPad not pads and tablets in general. Thus the article title.
Re:Wow... (Score:5, Informative)
Well you can disagree, but the I think the point of the article is that the two Trek designers specifically brought up the similarities.
"For example, pinch to zoom—that was relatively difficult to do even as a visual effect. It's implemented brilliantly on the iPad and the iPhone."
Drexler said that to him, the iPad is "eerily similar" to the PADDs used in Star Trek. "We always felt that the classic Okuda T-bar graphic was malleable, and that you could stretch and rearrange it to suit your task, just like the iPad," he said. "The PADD never had a keyboard as part of its casing, just like the iPad. Its geometry is almost exactly the same—the corner radius, the thickness, and overall rectangular shape."
"It's uncanny to have a PADD that really works," Drexler said, unlike the non-functional props made for the TV series and later films. "The iPad is the true Star Trek dream," Drexler told Ars.
None of those things apply to, eg, the Kindle (nor other pre-iPad tablets. I've never seen an Android tablet) which has a very different form factor, different bezel/corner radius, different colors, different screen, no touch. So, take it up with the designers of the PADD if you've got a problem ;-)
Re:Wow... (Score:3, Informative)
Other than Jake Sisko, how often did you see the Star Trek post TNG cast use styluses with PADDs?
How often do you see people actually using Pogo styluses with iPad/iPod Touch/iPhones?
The iPad is largely the first consumer touch screen device that can aptly be compared with a PADD.
Re:not quite. (Score:5, Informative)
You rarely saw data uploaded to a PADD and you never saw it running complex applications or interacting with the world; that's what Tricorders were for.
All it really took was reading the article for several examples of how that's not true.
It's amazing really (Score:5, Informative)
It's amazing how much you can 'predict' given nearly a quarter century of hindsight. Not to mention that much of this technology is older than Okuda & Co. would have you believe.
I saw my first flat screen display with software configurable buttons in 1982, as this was the interface used to operate the simulation computers that drove the trainers for the MK88/2 and MK98/0 (Trident Backfit and Trident-I respectively) missile fire and launch control systems. (Though the screens were activated via a stylus rather than true touch screens.) The systems weren't new even then, they were at least six years old. (And thus designed even earlier.) For that matter, the many of the 'buttons' on the fire control console themselves (whose design dates to the early/mid 1970's) were actually miniaturized slide projectors that could display different messages under software control. Heck, the MK88/1 Poseidon system could (under software control) display different colors on a single button (though not different message text as the 88/2 and 98 could) as far back as the late 60's.
There's also sonar and torpedo fire control equipment from the same (early 70's) era with software configurable interfaces.
For that matter, as early as my VIC-20, the buttons on the keyboard could do various things depending on the software that was running at the time.
Re:Wow... (Score:5, Informative)
I vaguely recall Arthur C. Clark writing something about Heywood Floyd reading a newspaper on an electronic tablet like device while en route to the moon in "2001: A Space Odyssey", which was published in 1968.
Yes. That's in the movie. [mercurybrief.com] For the 1960s movie, they had to build the tablet into the table and project film from underneath.
not just star trek (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Errors in the article. (Score:4, Informative)
Good catch. It's from the episode Babel.
http://www.chakoteya.net/DS9/405.htm [chakoteya.net]
Re:not quite. (Score:1, Informative)
PADDs were usually only used exactly the same way paper is
If you watch the episodes carefully you see Data and Georgi also using them as extensions of the ships computer interface and/or as a collaborative task and data sharing devices. I also recall Crusher using them as extensions of sick bay medical devices. Picard and Riker used them as clipboards which was just more noticeable as the information exchange was part of the plot.
The PADD discussion hits on both of my two biggest problems with the iPad. One, it isn't an extension of my home computer. It's an extension of itunes which is far from the same thing as an extension of an entire machine. You can rig a bunch of apps to get close but still no cigar.
The second thing I dislike about the iPad is the weight and by extensions it's ergonomics. PADDs were light (you see people holding them with a thumb and forefinger) and a bit smaller. I have an iPad for testing and pitching at work and I feel like I can never hold it the same way for more than 3 mins before I have to change my hand position (whereas I can hold my iphone steady in front of my face for hours while reading an ebook.)
Once ChromeOS tablets with app sync come out I think they'll get much closer to what PADDs have achieved in fiction.
Re:not quite. (Score:1, Informative)
I do recall an interview in the early 90's where Micheal Okuda stated that a PADD could act like any main display [like the ones on the bridge] and thus, in theory, one could operate the entire ship while strolling down a corridor with a PADD in hand. My copies of the technical manual have long since been consigned to the basement, but I believe those [theoretical] capabilities were discussed there as well.
They were. The point was that all computing devices on the ship, from the communicators on up, were networked and configurable and could be used virtually interchangeably for all the same purposes (within the limits of their interface and computing power). That's why, to me, the resemblance between the iPad and PADD are largely superficial, i.e. the shape and the general UI principles - the real power of the PADD (i.e. all the other crap it was seamlessly linked to) does not exist in any significant form yet (and maybe it never would make sense for it to do so outside of a conceptually similar setting - i.e. a large warship).
Also note you never saw anyone logging in to a PADD (or anything else). I've always assumed they read your fingerprint or DNA or something every time you touched it.
Re:Wow... (Score:2, Informative)
and if you heard TFQuestions the reporter asked, they were probably along the lines of "so how close is the iPad to your PADD?" rather than "So what example of modern technology do you think is an analogue to something you designed for the show?"
Re:Nah. It'd be Gates yelling ... (Score:1, Informative)
I don't have a brain, you insensitive clod!
Re:not quite. (Score:3, Informative)
There's ONE concrete example of a PADD being used for anything other than reading text in that article (two if you count the "predictive text input" thing, which I'm not sure I buy as a stand-alone app) and it's from DS9, and it was a plot-point - Sisko was using it as an Identikit to piece together the face of a woman he thought he saw. The rest of it is Okuda talking about how he envisioned PADDs being used rather than how they were portrayed.
I'm just sayin' - most of the time they were used to further the plot in a paperless future-world. The rest isn't especially canonical as it wasn't actually shown on-screen.
Re:Wow... (Score:3, Informative)
Except for the Archos tablet which was on the market for a whole year prior to the ipad complete with multi-touch. They had older similar form factor tablets that were slightly less capble too. Archos failed to market it properly however as most people didn't even know it was on the market until they were looking for ipads and found it. It's better in every way save for battery life which will require an arm based tablet to compete with since the Archos was built on the Atom.
It's pretty typical for Apple to claim a first while not actually having been first. They get a pass because they made it pretty. That is what Apple does and they are quite good at it. I don't know why more companies don't put such efforts into the UI.
Re:Wow... (Score:2, Informative)
There's the wonderful place called wikipedia that provides a history of tablets, which predates iPad by almost three decades. Just like with the iPod Apple has successfully rewritten history to make everyone believe the iPod was the first MP3 player (it wasn't). Now they've convinced people the iPad was first, but it was not.
1950s- Tom Dimond demonstrates the Styalator electronic tablet with pen for computer input and software for recognition of handwritten text in real-time
1968 - The movie 2001 includes wireless iPad like devices for watching videos or doing work.
early 80s - KoalaPad - drawing pad designed for use with Atari, Commodore, and Apple -bit computers
1985 - Pencept and CIC both offer PC computers for the consumer market using a tablet and handwriting recognition instead of a keyboard and mouse. Operating system is MS-DOS.
1989 - The first commercially available tablet-type portable computer was the GRiDPad[27] from GRiD Systems, released in September. Its operating system was based on MS-DOS.
Re:Wow... (Score:3, Informative)
It's pretty typical for Apple to claim a first while not actually having been first
Actually, it's not. I'll wait while you go and find some actual examples...
Came up empty, huh? In fact, what's common is for bashers to claim Apple claimed a first, when Apple never did claim a first. For example, Apple never claimed they invented the touch-screen tablet computer. Yet you say they did. Why?
Re:Wow... (Score:3, Informative)
Actually I didn't say that Apple invented the touch-screen tablet. That was an invention entirely your own.
Apple claimed to the be the first computer to run without a floppy disk drive. This was entirely incorrect as there were plenty of disk-less machines that booted via PXE.
They claimed that they invented multi-touch which they then went an patented except that they didn't invent it and in fact purchased it in true 90's era Microsoft style.
Apple in many ways is behaving like Microsoft in the 1990s. They buy what they want, then take all the credit. It worked for Microsoft, it'll work for Apple.