- Wearable Mac FAQ
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What is the Wearable Mac
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Are there other Wearable macs?
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What about Apple hardware in Wearable computers?
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What about Mac compatible Hardware for wearables?
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Has Apple done anything in the wearable market?
- Q: What is the Wearable Mac?
- A: The wearable mac project is a project taking the mac where only a few macs have gone, onto the user. Many *nix and other command prompt OS based computers have been built for use when being worn, an idea started by Steve Mann in the 70's. MIT made the idea famous but many other colleges have "cyborgs" on campus. Recently companies like Xybernaut and Via-PC have developed wearable computers. Many people out side of these businesses and colleges also develop wearables but many use the rescorces that have been developed for these groups. DARPA has also expressed intrest in wearable computers for military applications but this information is harder to find as the military is working on useing this technology.
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- Q: Are there other wearable macs?
- A: Yes. I personaly have seen at least two completed wearable macs online- one system used was an SE and the display was based on an old camcorder CRT, but I havn't seen this online in years. The other is one made by Ex-Apple Engineer Micheal Clark who built a wearable mac based on a Duo and tried internaly to sell wearable macs based on Duos, 5300s and 3400s with little luck.
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The second case leads to several logged discussions in wearcomp boards that question others about the existance and feasibility of wearable macs, but I haven't seen any results from these messages aside from the one mentioned. There are other mentionings of wearable macs online, one I see often see is A Dr. Mac column predicting wearable macs in the year 2007. I also see a number of referances to an Andy Ihnatko machack column making referance to his own wearable mac project, but with Andy you never know. Even MIT students have shown interest in wearable macs-this MIT hack took a Twiddler 1 (a PC based chording keyboard) and hacked it to output to an ADB port that Apple, SUN and Next used- Apple being the only one with portable systems.
- Finaly if you want to tread into rumor teritory Apple Computers itself might have experimented with wearables (likely lead by Micheal Clark based on what I can find). Aside from random designs found in thier industrial design group (See the book Apple Design: The Works of the Apple Industry Design Group) a report at Mac Rumors links to a report that lists Apple as developing a wearable prototype with a steroscopic display as early as 1995. Theres also a concept (seen here) from Apples in-house designers, could be a newton or a mac but it was covered in Apple Design
- If you know of other related wearable mac referances please let me know.
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- Q: What about apple hardware in wearable computers?
- A: Yes Apple hardware has been used in wearable computers since the earlist systems. Steve Mann- arguably the father of wearable computers- first strapped a modified Apple ][ on to his back in the 70s or 80s. Apple's Newton keyboards have been modified to work with the PS/2 interface many wearable PC's use. Newtons with addition software can be used as a handwriting recognition engins for both macs and windows based systems. The iPod could easily make a nice portable 5, 10, or 20 GB harddrive for a wearable system due to its small size and firewire interface.
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- Q: What about mac compatible hardware for wearables?
- A: Yes, there are many different wearable based products that support the mac, as well as hacks that make them work with the mac. By useing an adaptor any number of VGA or S-VGA compatible displays can be used, including Sony Glasstron, i-Glasses, Cy-Visors, MicroOptical Corp's high end products.
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Twiddler 1's have been hacked to support the Mac and its older ADB port by MIT (See: Other Wearable Macs) With the newest models supporting the Mac with USB or PS/2 to ADB adaptors. Other input devices are avalible such as Half Qwerty keyboards and software have been supporting the mac since 1991, a year before the DOS version and 4 years before the first windows version. Currently they make a small hardware version that from what I hear made a good impression at Macworld NY in 2001.
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- Q:Has Apple done anything in the wearable market?
- A: Yes, Apple has giving plenty of support to Nomadic Research Labs in nearly all of thier projects, from the current Microship to the various bikes that have been produced in the past. The Earlies versions of these bikes I found was based on a Mac Portable, the infamous 16 pound boat anchor. Apple also worked with Xybernaut Computers in 2000 according to on the Xybernaut site. A number of ex-apple employees also move into the wearable dimention, expecialy those who worked on the various Newton and Portable programs.
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