Blog
A History of Apple & Innovation: From Star Trek’s PADD to Apple’s iPad
The science fiction genre has long been a source of inspiration for technological creativity and product innovation. Should it be those that produce tangible, technologically realisable products that should be considered innovators? Or is it those who construct the credible ideas and concepts, that serve to inspire product design and creativity in the first instance, that deserve such credit?
Existing concepts; Star Trek-nology
Science fiction has long been the testing ground of technological concepts; it provides an area for society to express its wants, perceived needs and consider the new possibilities of technology in general. It is no surprise then to find many examples of technology in the science fiction setting that strike an uncanny resemblance to the technologies we use today. The following quote demonstrates the link between the iconic Star Trek series and that of Apple’s gradual evolution of touch screen devices.
“Not long after their debut in TNG, PADDs became a real-life technology with the introduction of the Apple Newton; Palm Pilots being a similar device common in the world of the present. Recently, devices with touch-sensitive displays and user input systems which reconfigure themselves depending on the task at hand, such as the iPod Touch, iPhone, and most recently, the iPad have been developed which bear an even stronger resemblance to PADDs and the LCARS system.” - (Memory Alpha, 2010)
Apple are often extremely intuitive in the marketing of their products, well they didn’t miss the trick with the iPad either. The iPad advertising campaign featured many examples of the iPad displaying Star Trek related imagery and content, couple this together with the striking resemblance in name and visual form and one can confidently assume there is a little more than co-incidence involved.
The name “iPad” itself evokes the PADD (Personal Access Display Device) which is the term used for the gadget that was first introduced in the original series in 1966 and was coined in 1987 on Star Trek: The Next Generation, the show’s first TV revival…At the end of the day, and even after all of Apple’s hard work, we have Gene Roddenberry and his visionary designers from Star Trek to thank for the inspiration for this technological marvel — the PADD. - (ZDNet, 2010)
Related Blog Articles
- Purple Coffee :: Guernsey Web Design Blog :: A History of Apple & Innovation: Apple’s “Innovative” use of Existing Technologies & Design Concepts
- Purple Coffee :: Guernsey Web Design Blog :: A History of Apple & Innovation: Defining innovation; is it a matter of perspective?
- Purple Coffee :: Guernsey Web Design Blog :: Avant Garden Guernsey Website Online.
- Purple Coffee :: Guernsey Web Design Blog :: A History of Apple & Innovation: Mythology of the Apple Brand & Commodity Camaraderie
- Purple Coffee :: Guernsey Web Design Blog :: A History of Apple & Innovation: I’m a Mac! I’m a PC!
