If Apple had made the Macintosh into a mobile phone, would there still be an iPhone?

In Apple's history, if there is one of the most important products, one of the answers must be the iPhone. But apart from the smartphones that "changed" the world, they can't leave it behind – the Macintosh. The macintosh 128K was introduced in 1984, opening up the market at the time and ushering in Apple's "Mac" era for decades to come.

▲ Image from: 9TO5Mac, Unsplash

Originally two different products, but in the whimsy of designer Rex Sowards, they were integrated into a pocket Macintosh like a mobile phone - Macintosh Pocket.

This bold design of "going back in time" is actually Rex Sowards's answer to another idea: If Apple wanted to build a pocket-sized Macintosh in the 8090s, what would be the result?

▲ Image from: Behance

Rex Sowards first imagined the Macintosh Classic as a device similar to the Game Boy. The Game Boy Pocket (a small version of the Game Boy) is naturally one of the design inspirations for the "Macintosh Pocket".

▲ Game Boy Pocket, image courtesy of iFixit

In addition, there are Rex Sowards' long-term research into models such as the Macintosh Classic, Macintosh Quadra and Performa, the "Snow White Design Language" created by German designer Esslinger that Apple used in the late 80s, and the old-fashioned Mac style.

▲ Image from: Behance

To put the computer into the phone, how to achieve the control of the cursor has become the most energy-consuming part of Rex Sowards. Given the age of the envisaged product, it is clearly inappropriate to use a trackpad or touch screen. But he also doesn't want to use a trackball, because that would be reminiscent of The BlackBerry's classic design.

▲ Image courtesy of Angelinawen, AppleInsider

Hesitant, Rex Sowards, after referring to Apple's PowerBook model launched in the 90s, decided to use the trackball solution. But instead of centering it, it was placed on the right side above the keyboard, not only to avoid similarities with the BlackBerry design, but also to put the Apple logo and product labels in the vacated place.

▲ Image from: Behance

The CRT monitor screen used on the Macintosh Pocket gives it a more memorable feel to the old computers of that era. The label on the back of the fuselage is also borrowed from the previous Apple and Game Boy advertisements, deliberately creating a low-resolution and pixelated feeling.

▲ Image from: Behance

The back of the fuselage looks like only a large area of labels, but when you open the back cover, you can see the Macintosh Classic ports that Rex Sowards have ingeniously "hidden" here: the Apple Desktop Bus (ADB), printer, modem, and SCSI DB-25 interface. This scheme also cleverly combines the Game Boy's push-flip rear cover design and Apple's habit of hiding the port.

Of course, compared to the Macintosh Classic, the "Macintosh Pocket" is such a small body, naturally can not plug the common floppy disk drive of that era, and it can not run the mac OS of the past.

▲ Image from: Behance

But Rex Sowards' design was still a bold and interesting attempt, presenting a "parallel universe" kind of imagination, and if such a design idea had been adopted at that time, we might have seen what kind of product we would have seen.

There's another interesting thing about macintosh Pocket: Rex Sowards came up with the idea of making such a product from a clip from the episode Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.

▲ Image from: Behance

After being rescued from an illegal organization by the police after fifteen years, kimmy is full of curiosity about today's world, and when he sees the iPhone printed with apple logo, he is surprised and says, "Is this a Macintosh?"

Kimmy's iPhone is naturally not a Macintosh, but on the "Macintosh Pocket", we saw the Macintosh if it became an iPhone.