I can't imagine this could have been built, never mind productised, using 1984 technology. There was absolutely no way to get a processor + memory system + display into a box that small.
In 1984 everyone was using floppy disks for storage, and hard drives cost thousands of dollars. Even battery-backed RAM would have taken up an unexpectedly large volume.
Everyone takes touch panels for granted today, but in 1984 the only place you could find a high contrast touchless LCD panel was in research labs, or possibly available at ludicrous cost as an advance product demonstrator.
Touch - even pen touch - technology was certainly around, but not at this level of sophistication for affordable consumer applications.
That's because this was a product concept exercise. It's an exercise in thinking about functionality, design, and form and less about the underlying technology.
There was a period during the Scully era where Apple did a number of these concepts, most famously the "Knowledge Navigator" video.
This was circa 1987, but was looking ahead to 2000 and beyond with things like always-on background networking and video conferencing. 30 years later we're finally getting to some of the stretch concepts shown in the video, such as conversational interfaces like Siri.
Post-Scully and back into the Jobs II era, this stuff went away. And it's probably a good thing they did. Here's why:
"Commercial entities have no advantage in releasing concept products the likes of which they hope to subsequently sell. If the conceptual piece truthfully captures their “best” it can only tell their competitors how advanced they are and where they fall short. If it camouflages their true capabilities in an effort to mislead their competitors, then what value is it to others? In fact, the intention to mislead competitors is really the only effective reason for a commercial entity to publicly release concept products"
There touch pad accessories including transparent ones to put over the screen for drawing applications for many popular 80s computers including the Atari. These were good enough for CAD and drawing applications.
Touch POS were also available in the late 80s including virtual signature terminals.
The Casio PB-1000 was a micro computer with a touch screen and it was released in 87.
it would probably also make sense that they made something like this while they were trying to figure out what sort of newton-like object they should make
By visual prototype I mean: not working. The screen graphics on that prototype are likely paper with printed pixels and a sheet of polycarbonate stuck over the top. All very simple methods to make something that looks right, but certainly doesn't do anything useful. Its a very common process[0] in industrial design. The housing mouldings are made from polyurethane cast in silicone moulds (vacuum casting).
In 1984 everyone was using floppy disks for storage, and hard drives cost thousands of dollars. Even battery-backed RAM would have taken up an unexpectedly large volume.
Everyone takes touch panels for granted today, but in 1984 the only place you could find a high contrast touchless LCD panel was in research labs, or possibly available at ludicrous cost as an advance product demonstrator.
Touch - even pen touch - technology was certainly around, but not at this level of sophistication for affordable consumer applications.