Thank you for posting this, Michael MJD. We've been involved in touch technology for over 52 years, and today, we have over 30 million touchscreen installations worldwide. #EloIsEverywhere
If this supports multitouch, this could be the future of touch as GMOs and Cyborgs become more common. Claws and plastic don't work very well with capacitive touch.
Umm, not really I remember using a touchscreen POS at Subway in the late 90s... My manager agreed it was aptly named because it was Peice of Sh*t. Even more funny the same pos program was still in use till 4 years ago at my local gas station and they had only upgraded to it 10 or so years prior (before that it was still a 80s program... and this was a corporate owned Chevron, not some private owned.
IDK about pressure sensitive touchscreens but touchscreens has been around since mid 60s tought with stylus pens etc. Heck Nazis had video call in 1936 tough it was so expensive they dropped that project, same as we had electric cars more than 100 years ago or electric scooters back in 1916 which progressive women drove
Great find... Brings back memories. I worked for Elo, in their original TN facility, and was the system engineer on the initial iMac/Touch prototype (I still have a scar on left hand from this project!). I recall Apple actually approaching Elo to integrate touch onto the iMac. The touch on tube technology was already available and being used with Elo's CRT products - so it made an easy fit for the iMac. Many of these were iMacs with touch were sold. The primary use was for a table top kiosks with Web interface. There were special internet browsers that would allow you to lock the to a specific URL. The same browser would make the URL more touch friendly by manipulating the button size and location. With the browser, and the iMac you could deploy this makeshift kiosk in your business lobby. I do not remember the offerings from MicroTouch or Troll, but good to know they had something also.
I'm super familiar with ELO. They're almost the industry standard for retail touch screens...and EVERY knockoff uses screens compatible with their drivers. There should be a way to change the pointer precision options so that it works better. Fun Fact: If I recall correctly, the Z-Axis for ELO touchscreens isn't measuring how hard you press. It's measuring how squished your finger gets during the press. At least, that's how it works on newer units.
How does it measure how squished your finger is? A camera? 😂 or maybe it’s just seeing higher suppression of the acoustic waves cuz that would make more sense
A store I was working in was being remodeled and I started to hear whispers of a giant touchscreen TV going on the sales floor. When we walked in, sure enough there was an at least 60" TV that changed between a product selection kiosk and pleasant imagery. I thought, "Who makes these?" When I saw "Elo" at the bottom, it all made sense.
13:03 I'm shocked the scroll work that way in such an early touch display. People who made drivers for this thing were ahead of the time and sort of genius
I don't think that even relied on the driver. The PDF viewer probably just uses drag scrolling by default. That's usually what that hand cursor represents.
Omg, Action Retro said you were putting out a video on this "soon" but I didn't expect it *this* soon! This is such a weird and innovative way to make a CRT into a touchscreen that I'm glad to see more content on it. GREAT score on the red G3 too, I don't see that one much but it's my personal fave.
Just finished watching the previous video about bootleg games. What a treat, another video! Touchscreen CRTs do sound unusual but Mac? Even more unusual. Interesting
Not that unusual, fairly common in bars, casinos and such for gambling machines (card games and similar). And some terminals, but mostly gambling machines.
The earliest interaction I had with a touch screen that wasn't an LCD panel was probably around 1991 as a small child. My school had a computer that they wheeled into classrooms on a cart and it had a clear panel stuck over the CRT monitor that was touch sensitive. I remember playing chess on it. It had to be calibrated everytime you used it because of the distance between the screen and the panel so depending on your viewing angle it would be way off. The chess program used this as a feature in two player games as you couldn't try to move the other players pieces and it keeps two sets of calibrations when starting a game.
@riggles We had one of these at the Indianapolis Zoo too when I was a kid. It used to have a game where it would take a photo of you and then that photo would be your character's head, and you could walk around a 3d environment with it. I think they also may have had them at some McDonalds locations when they used to have the kids computer station in their restaurants.
We actually have used ELO monitors in broadcast too. Usually for the robotic camera systems, or the broadcast automation systems. Though I think our current monitors are Dell and Viewsonic.
I remember half a decade years ago as a child that our new public library building had a set of TV-sized ELO touchscreens that showed statistics related to the solar panels.
One thing I can confirm is that Elo is everywhere in the commercial world. Every register I have ever messed with as well as Target price kiosks and Home Depot paint kiosks, even most self checkouts, use Elo screens.
If i had a nickel for every time i saw a video about the touchscreen iMac this weekend, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice, right?
Touch screens were first invented in the 60s and sold in the 80s by HP. And the first touch screen phone was made in the early 90s by IBM. I remember watching a TH-cam channel that played 80s commercials and I was so shocked when there was a commercial for a touchscreen computer.
There were even GM cars in the 1980s with touch screen infotainment, like Buick Reatta and some Oldsmobile model. Looked weird on a 70s style rectangular brown dashboard with fake wood trim.
So it looks like the first patent was from 1946! The first "practical" models weren't built until the 70s. Source: wikipedia en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touchscreen
I saw one of these as a kiosk in Currys (UK electronics retailer) around 2005 or so. It was long abandoned, since the product display it was meant for was from 1999ish. There was a cardboard surround on it inviting you to touch. I thought it was a cool idea.
10:00 The 'Value Apple Reseler' program is an awesome idea. I remember seeing a tablet Mac Book conversion that was also sold under this program back in the day. Companies need to do this today. How cool would it be to be able to buy a semi-official Mac Book Pro 2023 'tablet' today? Or any of the others like Dell, HP, ASUS, etc. They don't lose any money, they no longer need to honor the warranty since the reseller does that now. It is a total win, win, win.
It was called the Modbook i think, and was sold in the late 00s, as a macbook with the two sides of the laptop joint together and a touchscreen layer added
I believe they were losing revenue bc ppl weren't buying the new macs that were coming out but buying the repurposed older models. Snazzy labs did a pretty good video about it. This was back when they let 3rd party companies put macos on almost anything
@@localblackman427 Yeah, staying profitable isn't easy, especially with Apple prices. AFAIK, The Modbook ran OS X. Apple stopped licensing macOS way before OS X.
I have a pretty vivid memory from Kindergarten or grade 1 (2001-2003) of interacting with a CRT computer with a touchscreen at my school. More recently I've been unsure about that memory since I was just tapping glass, and I didn't think that kind of touchscreen was generally available back then, but it could have been one of these!
I have no doubt you used a touch screens at that time, touch screens were not a new technology by then, they were adding touch screens to monitors back in the days of monochrome crt monitors. And, yes they did tend to crop up in schools and kindergartens.
I remember some kind of touch screen imac from a museum I went to as a kid, almost forgot these were a thing. Back then the imacs were pretty new and they were suddenly popping up in many places where you wouldn't expect to see a mac because back then Macs were really rare. Then more people got to know them when the first imacs came out.
Even though you changed the analog board, I could tell that the CRT still had a bit of a tint to it. This iMac was definitely switched on for a long time, probably as a kiosk.
My VX720 showed up with a tint despite just 1000 hours of beam-on time. I don't know if that was due to manufacturing variance/defects, aging electronics, or the beam wearing out in standby rather than just when running. I'd try calibrating the screen colors (ensuring proper white balance in dark, medium, and light scenes) before concluding the tube is worn.
IBM had a touch screen monitor for their computers in the 80s, hell Oldsmobile offered an optional full-blown touch screen infotainment system (minus GPS obviously) in 1986 and offered it until the early 90s.
My school had one of those external touch screen overlays on the ONE iMac we had in 2002. At the school. It was wild going into the computer lab and playing some of the games that were installed on it that were compatible with touch. (All educational)
I remember a dark blue touchscreen iMac that was used in my high school’s library kiosk, it had an interactive program for school clubs and other student services! Elo was even a big name for touchscreen computers, because they also made LCD touchscreen kiosks in schools and community centers!
Long ago, I worked in an Apple authorized repair/retail store. I remember doing a couple conversions of Apple CRTs to touch screen. I believe it was the Sony Trinitron tube Apple displays. I can't recall for sure who made the conversion kit, but I suspect it was Microtouch. The CRT was removed, and the panel sandwiched in between the bezel and crt.
Old friend and bandmate (rest his soul) wound up with one of these in 2002 or 03. We loved using this with Cubasis VST 2. (No, not the new "Cubasis".) The jump from Steinberg 3 on the S/T and BBS/IRC to a actual DAW and sequencer and dial up blew his mind back then. The same goes for the old man. I miss the charm of Os8-OSX Tiger. I ditched Mac OS in 2008 for my music production in favour of Adobe Auditon 3 and then Cakewalk and Sonar on good ol XP and Windows 7.
Interesting stuff. There were touch screen Amiga computers in the early 90s, or rather Amiga computers with 3rd party touch screen tech. Mostly used in kiosk set-ups in conjunction with multimedia programs like Amiga Vision and Scala. I wonder if elo did touch screens for Amigas earlier on.
Basically, set the camera's shutter speed to 1/60. On a 60fps video that's a 360 degree shutter angle but totally doable with modern electronic shutter
You could buy the internal elo kits by themselves. I bought one in the mid-nineties as a teenager. I cracked open my Compaq's monitor to install it which was probably dangerous. I used it on all those Imergy Star Trek CD-ROMs
would love to see one of those kits installed on a Rev. B bondi-blue iMac with the Sonnet HARMONi 600 MHz G3 CPU upgrade-cards that also adds FireWire. Those, plus a ForMac iProTV SCSI+TV-tuner card in the mezzanine-slot (and a GeeThree Stealth Serial Port card to replace the internal modem) would make for one killer combo!
some people have populated the "Wings" personality card on the All-In-One PowerMac G3 with a USB controller-chip and gotten USB working on it. Maybe the elo touchscreen kit could be installed to that All-In-One G3's CRT and connected via that USB port?
It is possible to rapidly design an HTML page with large functionning buttons (as hyperlinks) using MS PowerPoint 2003. That would (i think) perfectly illustrate the use of that kind of device as kiosks. With office 2003 you could even add videos as in any slideshow and the video would play right in the web browser! 9:08
I used an addon for one of the older Macs from the late 1980s that made it into a pressure based touch screen. This was back in the late 90s in a hospital therapy center.
So cool that you have one of these. The story goes that Elo had to develop a SAW touch screen that used UV curable features so they could retrofit to the glass directly. Every other company that tried to make a touch screen iMac had a big bezel or extra glass in front, so Steve Jobs only ok'd their design since it kept the original iMac look
Reminds me of the Buick Reatta CRT infotainment screen in early models. They ditched it due to inconvenience compared to physical buttons and dials. If only they knew
A tip for being able to use the touchscreen feature to navigate the desktop/OS: change the resolution the display is running at. This usually makes those hard to touch elements larger and easier to touch.
The way you scrolled the PDF document at 13:03 was so ahead of its time made famous now by the iPhone in 2007, I remember Windows tablets not even being able to do that, you had to use a stylus and hit the scrollbar buttons on the side.
It's still one of my favorite computer designs ever. I just don't know how well it would hold up being pushed day in day out by people who aren't going to be gentle.
Very cool vid. You should try one of those “click & point” video games which were popular in the 90s such as Myst. (Not sure if there was a Mac port of that game).
I remember seeing a touch screen mac WAAY before 1999 it was mid 90s kiosk at a show/museum, I wonder if the same company made it, I remember being blown away because it was sensing your presses through the glass which seemed like magic to me as a kid.
I remember touch screen overlays when I was in middle school in 1997. Mostly on Mac laptops. These were used for physically/mentally disabled children. I’m also in Tennessee.
It’s crazy that this topic is being covered because I have had an Elo touchscreen slot-loading iMac for the past 20 years and have only recently grabbed it from storage. I even have the driver installation program on the hard drive. There really was no information online about it, so I’m glad to start seeing it covered.
@@MichaelMJD Unfortunately, they didn’t make an OS X version. I remember downloading the installer back in ~2005, and the only version that existed is for Mac OS Classic.
@@MichaelMJD It might be true that there are OS X drivers which are compatible with whatever chipset Elo used, but I recall looking for OS X drivers when the Elo touchscreen module was still supported by Elo. The only drivers on the Elo’s driver site was for Mac OS 8 to 9.2.2. Would you be interested in me sending you the drivers that I currently have from my iMac DV? I went through it the other day and noticed I never deleted the installer files from way back.
Oh yeah if you still have them that would be awesome! My email address is on my channel's about page if you want to get in contact with me there. Thanks so much!
When I was enrolling to my British college to do a levels. they were using G3 macs to process everyone. Back when they were current. Makes me feel old.
This is crazy. So ahead of its time. All the news outlets are stupid for not mentioning this and debating whether there will ever be a touchscreen Mac. Well guess what there already was!
I know it’s not developed by Apple but this was bank when Apple was actually innovative 😢 I absolutely loved my eMac. It was a powerhouse and beautiful!
Your videos are amazing! and i love CRTs but touchscreen CRTs.. i thought the megatouch was the only touchscreen CRT :'D Edit: amazing explanation aswell
I have a troll touch eMac!! So crazy to hear it mentioned by someone else for the first time ever in the time I’ve had it! I never knew anything about it or that there were other models by various companies. Super cool stuff, I’m glad I clicked this video.
Maybe this will get some traction and make me feel less crazy were these ever in a fast food restaurant like burgerking in the play area. I have a weird memory with no Internet background of a blue all in one touchscreen computer.
Woah, I didn't know they existed with native touch screens. I feel like I remember my elementary school having these screens that laid on top of the real screen that added touch functionality for kids that were unable to use a mouse due to disabilities, but I'm almost positive none of our iMacs had the touch screen built in..I can still kinda remember helping to put them into the computer lab and I feel like I would've remembered this for sure..lol, cool to learn about!
This is 100% a Jony Ive idea and “yes”. Steve Jobs absolutely hated touchscreen computers to his core. He said to in the 2008 MacBook Air keynote when they first introduced multitouch trackpads.
I don't know what else they did but elo was adding these for kiosks in higher ed on campuses. I think they sold in the thousands, at least. I know a few Apple customers used them with custom software packages in OS 9 and OS X as kiosks on campuses.
I remember touchscreens back in the mid 90s, they used them at kiosks in the local mall where I live everytime they had some event or big movie on the theater so you could check screening times or whatever event was going on.
Very cool! Reminds me me of the then already old point of service terminals I used to service in the early 2000s. With novell netware running on dos and with touch displays. Macs were not a thing over here in that time, so sadly I have never seen a touch imac.
In 1994, EDS (Electronic Data Systems-Ross Perot’s company) demonstrated a 3D vector monitor that could detect where within a box the user was reaching in. I saw this monitor demonstrated at the Info Mart in Dallas. EDS had an entire floor for their exhibits. The floor was laid out to look like a small town’s downtown Main Street. It was very fascinating! They also had a large screen monitor that would allow the user to use what looked like a laser pointer to control a mouse cursor from across the room in Windows 3.1. If you touched the screen with the pointer, it behaved like a stylus and you could write on it. Of course, writing recognition was crude by today’s standards.
(Grayson sees a thumbnail of a touch-based iMac and made a big smile on his face...) 😃😄 Ahh... The good old Mac. 😉 And man do I love seeing that touchscreen. That is awesome!
How, now that's pretty awesome and rare. The 1st "nearly similar" thing I used was a DIY light pen using a diode stuck in a regular felt tip on a ZX Spectrum w/ CRT TV. I remember we had that simplistic painting program you can see in other yt videos. The original pen seems to be dk'tronics graphic lightpen. My dad did make a DIY lightpen we used back then, among with other DIY ZX Spectrum stuff. Xerox PARC had some of those earlier. Lightpen, Trackpad, maybe even touchscreen and whiteboard. Those just weren't ready for the masses or too expensive. I never have seen a PC using a light pen, tho any CRT can use it technically. Standard music cassette tape storage drives for PCs also are quite rare, I never have seen anyone using it and just in 2023 I have seen one in a picture. Among faster floppies...but cassettes still are cool tech and cheap ofc. W/ such PPC hardware I'd give some high res games a try which we didn't see in DOS this way. Like Lemmings, Prince of Persia 1, Wolfpack, Comanche 1 CD. There was also a WSAD key using game for Mac. Lemmings need a higher version number or you'll miss music in difficulty 2-4 and like level 5+ you play. I only have different G4 eMac, QuickSilver and PowerBook, but Classic Environment with 9.2 runs some old apps and games. Will give 10.4.12 unofficial a try. Sadly 10.5 dropped Classic Environment, but 10.5.9 unofficial is said to be way faster, so a 2nd partition could make sense. Those old machines are like made for ScummVM and DOSBox-SVN, if not using old Mac apps and games ofc. My eMac G4 has FW 400 externally, so a FW 400 to IDE case would make it fast using an SSD or just install other OS, maybe even 10.5.9 on this 700 MHz G4 eMac. Well, I prefer 10.3.9 or 10.4.11, maybe 10.4.12, because of Classic Environment w/ 9.2 app/game compatibility. There were several custom mod for MacBook 1,1 and newer many years ago called ModBook, but these are'nt the standard models and very expensive. Tho I think those just use resistive or capacitice overlay screen foils, not waves. Not sure... I guess it's just similar to Fujitsu and Panasonic ToughBooks screens. This original hardware will raise in value, even if it's defective. Imagine there's only one left in like 20 years. Lol several early Apple mice were just aweful having only one button. At least the one you showed and the "soap" mouse which has the button at the bottom and short cable also. You had to buy the keyboard with integrated USB Hub or USB enhancement cable to use the mouse. That's interesting tech using simple waves. I saw an Apple patent for a blind keyboard using the same tech with a phone. Imagine you lay your phone flat onto the table and just write next to it on the table (not like the LASER projected one, but just somewhere in front of it). Text correction does the rest. It's just not ready to be released, but some day it will be used. About finding old tech's information: Google's algorithms, SEO and similar stuff is actually hindering us to find qualified old informations. Google optimizes the search outputs in a way they optimize their money gatherings. They show you what most people are interested in and what makes you most addicted to use the internet for a longer time. That's the sad reality. Since like 5-10 years or so you'll find more results about rare stuff and real user knowledge on reddit than on Google, tbh. And ofc. it was rare even back then. Macs even were so rare in Europe, that many people didn't know the Apple brand exists before seeing the massive ads about MacBook or iPod. I heard about many things like Amiga, Atari, BeOS, OS/2, Solaris next to Linux, BSD and ofc. DOS and Windows, but nearly nothing about Apple for decades. It was like Microsoft was omni-present and Apple didn't existed. There were literally no Apple ads in Europe. We read many magazines in 486 to Pentium III/4 times, but we never saw any Apple ads in those. I once tried to gather some information about add-in Pentium III PCI cards, but wasn't lucky, searched for days w/o finding anything about those. I found some with 486 add-in PCI cards, but not with Pentium III "PCs in a PC". You could use ScummVM with a touchscreen. Well, it may be not ergonomic to try find locations for hours holding up your arms. But it's one of those apps which actually use touchscreen alot. I use an Android tablet with capacitive pen or Samsung Note S pen for that. It's a bit more portable. Tho a plutonium battery add-on would make this iMac also quite portable. There's an old ad I just saw on yt showing a lady carrying an older Mac in a bag riding a bicycle, lol. Commodore SX-64 were kinda portable.
Thank you for making this video. I have an elo touchscreen blueberry iMac 350.. I actually have a video of it on my channel because it's awesome.. But it's short. And the hard drive sounds/sounded like it could go at any minute. I got it from a friend, who I think found it on the side of a street if I remember right.😱 But your explainer is excellent!
Thank you for posting this, Michael MJD. We've been involved in touch technology for over 52 years, and today, we have over 30 million touchscreen installations worldwide. #EloIsEverywhere
If this supports multitouch, this could be the future of touch as GMOs and Cyborgs become more common. Claws and plastic don't work very well with capacitive touch.
Hi EloTouchSolutions
technolergy
1970, was it porn entertainment ? Weirdo years !
i want one :(
It's about time someone covered this. My college was filled with these iMacs with toich screens. Hundreds and hundreds of them.
Wow so cool to hear. Could you tell us what were they used for?
Its Hard To Believe Can you Tell Which Where
We had quite a few computer labs filled with these touch screen iMacs.
That's really cool. At the same time, though, to think most of those have quite probably been scrapped breaks my heart!
Toich screen pffft
its crazy to think that it took us so long to make a touchscreen with a taptic sensor, yet we did it in 1999
Umm, not really I remember using a touchscreen POS at Subway in the late 90s... My manager agreed it was aptly named because it was Peice of Sh*t. Even more funny the same pos program was still in use till 4 years ago at my local gas station and they had only upgraded to it 10 or so years prior (before that it was still a 80s program... and this was a corporate owned Chevron, not some private owned.
@@SilvaDreams"ummm" cool story. 🙄
What he's talking about is the pressure sensitivity. It's a unique and complicated feature.@@SilvaDreams
IDK about pressure sensitive touchscreens but touchscreens has been around since mid 60s tought with stylus pens etc. Heck Nazis had video call in 1936 tough it was so expensive they dropped that project, same as we had electric cars more than 100 years ago or electric scooters back in 1916 which progressive women drove
@@Bearbytez "ummm" if you have nothing to say, say nothing 🙄
Great find... Brings back memories. I worked for Elo, in their original TN facility, and was the system engineer on the initial iMac/Touch prototype (I still have a scar on left hand from this project!). I recall Apple actually approaching Elo to integrate touch onto the iMac. The touch on tube technology was already available and being used with Elo's CRT products - so it made an easy fit for the iMac. Many of these were iMacs with touch were sold. The primary use was for a table top kiosks with Web interface. There were special internet browsers that would allow you to lock the to a specific URL. The same browser would make the URL more touch friendly by manipulating the button size and location. With the browser, and the iMac you could deploy this makeshift kiosk in your business lobby. I do not remember the offerings from MicroTouch or Troll, but good to know they had something also.
this is why I love innovative vintage tech , you are always surprised to see technology ahead of its time
I'm super familiar with ELO. They're almost the industry standard for retail touch screens...and EVERY knockoff uses screens compatible with their drivers. There should be a way to change the pointer precision options so that it works better.
Fun Fact: If I recall correctly, the Z-Axis for ELO touchscreens isn't measuring how hard you press. It's measuring how squished your finger gets during the press. At least, that's how it works on newer units.
I wish I had a finger squish meter.
How does it measure how squished your finger is? A camera? 😂 or maybe it’s just seeing higher suppression of the acoustic waves cuz that would make more sense
@@Jwellsuhhuh more squish is more area used up, occams razor
@@gugu5285 oh ye that makes more sense
A store I was working in was being remodeled and I started to hear whispers of a giant touchscreen TV going on the sales floor. When we walked in, sure enough there was an at least 60" TV that changed between a product selection kiosk and pleasant imagery. I thought, "Who makes these?" When I saw "Elo" at the bottom, it all made sense.
I knew of resistive and capacitive touchscreens, and also those early optical ones, but I never imagined you could make one this good with acoustics.
13:03 I'm shocked the scroll work that way in such an early touch display. People who made drivers for this thing were ahead of the time and sort of genius
I don't think that even relied on the driver. The PDF viewer probably just uses drag scrolling by default. That's usually what that hand cursor represents.
2 mjd vids 2 days in a row? Impossible.
I know right!
Yea it feels impossible
Ikr!
Yeah that odd
No. It's necessary
Wow, thats amazing. A 25 year old Mac could have a touch screen, but new Macs don't. Plus its actually good!
Touchscreen isn’t really ergonomic for a computer monitor which sits upright. That’s what iPads are for
24* actually, I’m older than this computer 😂 (I’m almost 25)
because apple has the sense to recognize that touchscreen on a desktop/laptop is stupid
new mac CAN, but this still has no sense.
how else will they sell ipads?
Omg, Action Retro said you were putting out a video on this "soon" but I didn't expect it *this* soon! This is such a weird and innovative way to make a CRT into a touchscreen that I'm glad to see more content on it. GREAT score on the red G3 too, I don't see that one much but it's my personal fave.
Same
Same
Same
Same
Same
Just finished watching the previous video about bootleg games.
What a treat, another video!
Touchscreen CRTs do sound unusual but Mac? Even more unusual. Interesting
Not that unusual, fairly common in bars, casinos and such for gambling machines (card games and similar). And some terminals, but mostly gambling machines.
@@riggles oh yeah, right. Just never got to interact with one, got used to touchscreen LCDs more.
The earliest interaction I had with a touch screen that wasn't an LCD panel was probably around 1991 as a small child. My school had a computer that they wheeled into classrooms on a cart and it had a clear panel stuck over the CRT monitor that was touch sensitive. I remember playing chess on it. It had to be calibrated everytime you used it because of the distance between the screen and the panel so depending on your viewing angle it would be way off. The chess program used this as a feature in two player games as you couldn't try to move the other players pieces and it keeps two sets of calibrations when starting a game.
@@JoCaTen hi
@riggles We had one of these at the Indianapolis Zoo too when I was a kid. It used to have a game where it would take a photo of you and then that photo would be your character's head, and you could walk around a 3d environment with it. I think they also may have had them at some McDonalds locations when they used to have the kids computer station in their restaurants.
We actually have used ELO monitors in broadcast too. Usually for the robotic camera systems, or the broadcast automation systems. Though I think our current monitors are Dell and Viewsonic.
I remember half a decade years ago as a child that our new public library building had a set of TV-sized ELO touchscreens that showed statistics related to the solar panels.
One thing I can confirm is that Elo is everywhere in the commercial world. Every register I have ever messed with as well as Target price kiosks and Home Depot paint kiosks, even most self checkouts, use Elo screens.
"And by the way, I WILL be archiving this disk."
Was there ever any doubt? You're the man! 😄
disc, not disk.
@@lucymorrison They're both correct.
"Disc" is British English and "Disk" is American English. It's like "Colour" vs "Color"
@@abigaillilac1370 While true, it's usually that CD's (and the like) are Discs while Floppies (Along with Hard Drives and SSDs) are Disks.
If i had a nickel for every time i saw a video about the touchscreen iMac this weekend, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice, right?
Right! I saw Action Retro did it too
I’d have only one. Now I’m poor. :(
Can I have a nickel since you have two
A real Deep Impact/Armageddon situation.
If it was the algorithm. Google owns TH-cam.
Touch screens were first invented in the 60s and sold in the 80s by HP. And the first touch screen phone was made in the early 90s by IBM. I remember watching a TH-cam channel that played 80s commercials and I was so shocked when there was a commercial for a touchscreen computer.
There were even GM cars in the 1980s with touch screen infotainment, like Buick Reatta and some Oldsmobile model.
Looked weird on a 70s style rectangular brown dashboard with fake wood trim.
Great video! This got me wondering how far back can we go with touch screens on devices...
So it looks like the first patent was from 1946! The first "practical" models weren't built until the 70s.
Source: wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touchscreen
Dumb
You have Pateron don't you?
was the video unlisted when you commented bc how did you comment 5 hours ago
5 hours ago????? How?
I saw one of these as a kiosk in Currys (UK electronics retailer) around 2005 or so. It was long abandoned, since the product display it was meant for was from 1999ish. There was a cardboard surround on it inviting you to touch. I thought it was a cool idea.
You should come back to them and ask them to buy it for like 200£ bcs they probably have it stored in the back somewhere 😂
@@2elwor they tossed it out... :(
This is an awesome video. Incredible work!
10:00 The 'Value Apple Reseler' program is an awesome idea. I remember seeing a tablet Mac Book conversion that was also sold under this program back in the day. Companies need to do this today. How cool would it be to be able to buy a semi-official Mac Book Pro 2023 'tablet' today? Or any of the others like Dell, HP, ASUS, etc. They don't lose any money, they no longer need to honor the warranty since the reseller does that now. It is a total win, win, win.
It was called the Modbook i think, and was sold in the late 00s, as a macbook with the two sides of the laptop joint together and a touchscreen layer added
I believe they were losing revenue bc ppl weren't buying the new macs that were coming out but buying the repurposed older models. Snazzy labs did a pretty good video about it. This was back when they let 3rd party companies put macos on almost anything
@@localblackman427 Yeah, staying profitable isn't easy, especially with Apple prices. AFAIK, The Modbook ran OS X. Apple stopped licensing macOS way before OS X.
I have a pretty vivid memory from Kindergarten or grade 1 (2001-2003) of interacting with a CRT computer with a touchscreen at my school. More recently I've been unsure about that memory since I was just tapping glass, and I didn't think that kind of touchscreen was generally available back then, but it could have been one of these!
That’s so cool!
I have no doubt you used a touch screens at that time, touch screens were not a new technology by then, they were adding touch screens to monitors back in the days of monochrome crt monitors. And, yes they did tend to crop up in schools and kindergartens.
I remember some kind of touch screen imac from a museum I went to as a kid, almost forgot these were a thing. Back then the imacs were pretty new and they were suddenly popping up in many places where you wouldn't expect to see a mac because back then Macs were really rare. Then more people got to know them when the first imacs came out.
Touch screens were actually developed for museums. It prob wasn’t a Mac but a kiosk for the exhibit
Even though you changed the analog board, I could tell that the CRT still had a bit of a tint to it. This iMac was definitely switched on for a long time, probably as a kiosk.
My VX720 showed up with a tint despite just 1000 hours of beam-on time. I don't know if that was due to manufacturing variance/defects, aging electronics, or the beam wearing out in standby rather than just when running. I'd try calibrating the screen colors (ensuring proper white balance in dark, medium, and light scenes) before concluding the tube is worn.
Glad I wasn’t the only one noticing this.
The pressure sensitivity is really cool, I always think that could have musical implications
Can't belive there was a touch screen device from 1999. Keep it going MJD!
touchscreens are decades older than you think they are, they have existed in some form since the 1960s
IBM had a touch screen monitor for their computers in the 80s, hell Oldsmobile offered an optional full-blown touch screen infotainment system (minus GPS obviously) in 1986 and offered it until the early 90s.
I remember we had touchscreen smartboards at school in around 2002/2003. Only a couple years after 1999!
I worked at McDonald’s started in 1997, we had touch screen cash register.
HP 150 made in 1985 (?) had a touchscreen, using infrared diodes.
My school had one of those external touch screen overlays on the ONE iMac we had in 2002. At the school. It was wild going into the computer lab and playing some of the games that were installed on it that were compatible with touch. (All educational)
I remember a dark blue touchscreen iMac that was used in my high school’s library kiosk, it had an interactive program for school clubs and other student services! Elo was even a big name for touchscreen computers, because they also made LCD touchscreen kiosks in schools and community centers!
At first I assumed that it would use some miserable resistive overlay. However, that acoustic wave system seems fantastic!
Long ago, I worked in an Apple authorized repair/retail store. I remember doing a couple conversions of Apple CRTs to touch screen. I believe it was the Sony Trinitron tube Apple displays. I can't recall for sure who made the conversion kit, but I suspect it was Microtouch. The CRT was removed, and the panel sandwiched in between the bezel and crt.
Old friend and bandmate (rest his soul) wound up with one of these in 2002 or 03. We loved using this with Cubasis VST 2. (No, not the new "Cubasis".) The jump from Steinberg 3 on the S/T and BBS/IRC to a actual DAW and sequencer and dial up blew his mind back then. The same goes for the old man. I miss the charm of Os8-OSX Tiger. I ditched Mac OS in 2008 for my music production in favour of Adobe Auditon 3 and then Cakewalk and Sonar on good ol XP and Windows 7.
Interesting stuff. There were touch screen Amiga computers in the early 90s, or rather Amiga computers with 3rd party touch screen tech. Mostly used in kiosk set-ups in conjunction with multimedia programs like Amiga Vision and Scala. I wonder if elo did touch screens for Amigas earlier on.
Action Retro said you would be making a video about this didnt think it would be so soon! Thats awesome man!
Yeah the touchscreen stuff is cool but the real coolness is how he managed to film the iMac without flickering
Basically, set the camera's shutter speed to 1/60. On a 60fps video that's a 360 degree shutter angle but totally doable with modern electronic shutter
It's very human to take two steps forward and one step back. Apple always take that idea to the next level
they mostly take 1 step back and increase the price by 2 steps
They’re a lucky strike that just won’t burn out
Apple really had to do a backflip for those widgets
I see you all over the gaff lol, used to watch you when I was young
Till Jobs died lol
You could buy the internal elo kits by themselves. I bought one in the mid-nineties as a teenager. I cracked open my Compaq's monitor to install it which was probably dangerous. I used it on all those Imergy Star Trek CD-ROMs
would love to see one of those kits installed on a Rev. B bondi-blue iMac with the Sonnet HARMONi 600 MHz G3 CPU upgrade-cards that also adds FireWire. Those, plus a ForMac iProTV SCSI+TV-tuner card in the mezzanine-slot (and a GeeThree Stealth Serial Port card to replace the internal modem) would make for one killer combo!
some people have populated the "Wings" personality card on the All-In-One PowerMac G3 with a USB controller-chip and gotten USB working on it. Maybe the elo touchscreen kit could be installed to that All-In-One G3's CRT and connected via that USB port?
you are a legend for archiving the CD. Thanks a lot even if I don't have one
It is possible to rapidly design an HTML page with large functionning buttons (as hyperlinks) using MS PowerPoint 2003. That would (i think) perfectly illustrate the use of that kind of device as kiosks. With office 2003 you could even add videos as in any slideshow and the video would play right in the web browser! 9:08
Basically anything that reacts to the mouse could be used. Hypercard would be another good option.
I used an addon for one of the older Macs from the late 1980s that made it into a pressure based touch screen. This was back in the late 90s in a hospital therapy center.
I recognize the elo name! This would've been cool to see as some sort of POS or interactive kiosk display in the early 2000s!
Michael,
Thanks for this wonderful review of a this “touchscreen” iMac🖥✅👍🏻.
So cool that you have one of these. The story goes that Elo had to develop a SAW touch screen that used UV curable features so they could retrofit to the glass directly. Every other company that tried to make a touch screen iMac had a big bezel or extra glass in front, so Steve Jobs only ok'd their design since it kept the original iMac look
Reminds me of the Buick Reatta CRT infotainment screen in early models. They ditched it due to inconvenience compared to physical buttons and dials. If only they knew
A tip for being able to use the touchscreen feature to navigate the desktop/OS: change the resolution the display is running at.
This usually makes those hard to touch elements larger and easier to touch.
The way you scrolled the PDF document at 13:03 was so ahead of its time made famous now by the iPhone in 2007, I remember Windows tablets not even being able to do that, you had to use a stylus and hit the scrollbar buttons on the side.
It's too bad Elo and Apple didn't collaborate more directly and make a "blue sky" colored model
Touch, drag and drop - this works super well. Mighty impressed.
I saw it on Action Retro and it really shocked me that you can touch the screen on the iMac even before iPad…
When the FUCK do you think touchscreens were invented? they've been around since the 70s
I'm sorry, excuse me, they were patented in 1946. So 30 years earlier.
@@crimsonlion100no, Steve Jobs created it in 2007
@@prebenjaeger Just like he invented cancer?
@@crimsonlion100 yes and the McIntosh apple
I love the aesthetic of your video’s man. Keep it up. ❤
iMac G4 would've been the most ideal design for a touchscreen Mac.
The Sunflower? For sure.
It's still one of my favorite computer designs ever. I just don't know how well it would hold up being pushed day in day out by people who aren't going to be gentle.
When Action Retro mentioned you said you would be doing a retrospective video on these, I wasn't expecting it to be within days! Thanks for the video.
it'd be cool to see a tocuhscreen mac! good job :D
i came here as fast as i could!!! i had heard about these a long time ago and i never knew you owned one! 🧡
Very cool vid. You should try one of those “click & point” video games which were popular in the 90s such as Myst. (Not sure if there was a Mac port of that game).
Somewhat interestingly Myst was released for the Macintosh first, coming out late 1993 while it hit windows early 1994
Myst was first released on Macintosh
@@KearSki oh that’s really neat. Yeah MJD should consider trying that then.
I remember seeing a touch screen mac WAAY before 1999 it was mid 90s kiosk at a show/museum, I wonder if the same company made it, I remember being blown away because it was sensing your presses through the glass which seemed like magic to me as a kid.
apple went from allowing other businesses modify and sell their machines to not letting people repair their own devices.
i repaired a few of these back in high school , we had a few of these for students with special needs
The upload speed! Great videos!
20th User!!!
I remember touch screen overlays when I was in middle school in 1997. Mostly on Mac laptops. These were used for physically/mentally disabled children. I’m also in Tennessee.
On those CRTs you could lower the resolution to 640x480 and get bigger UI elements. Would probably make for a better touch experience.
It’s crazy that this topic is being covered because I have had an Elo touchscreen slot-loading iMac for the past 20 years and have only recently grabbed it from storage. I even have the driver installation program on the hard drive.
There really was no information online about it, so I’m glad to start seeing it covered.
Does yours happen to be running OS X? A couple TH-camrs have been trying to track down the OS X touch driver but its proven difficult.
@@MichaelMJD Unfortunately, they didn’t make an OS X version. I remember downloading the installer back in ~2005, and the only version that existed is for Mac OS Classic.
Hmm, that's interesting. I heard that apparently there was an OS X version, but the driver itself was created by a separate company.
@@MichaelMJD It might be true that there are OS X drivers which are compatible with whatever chipset Elo used, but I recall looking for OS X drivers when the Elo touchscreen module was still supported by Elo. The only drivers on the Elo’s driver site was for Mac OS 8 to 9.2.2. Would you be interested in me sending you the drivers that I currently have from my iMac DV? I went through it the other day and noticed I never deleted the installer files from way back.
Oh yeah if you still have them that would be awesome! My email address is on my channel's about page if you want to get in contact with me there. Thanks so much!
Elo was going way ahead of it's time with this one
Touchscreen computers were old news in the 90's and in the 80's already.
@@Kyntteri that's...not quite what I meant
@@Techmej Then congratulations for successfully hiding what ever the true meaning was.
this is actually the coolest thing ive ever seen... i NEED a touchscreen crt monitor now.
All the tech is the controller board. The Mac just sees usb input with software handling the "virtual mouse" data.
When I was enrolling to my British college to do a levels. they were using G3 macs to process everyone. Back when they were current. Makes me feel old.
This is crazy. So ahead of its time. All the news outlets are stupid for not mentioning this and debating whether there will ever be a touchscreen Mac. Well guess what there already was!
The prophecy! Right after Action Retro told us about it, it's up!
I know it’s not developed by Apple but this was bank when Apple was actually innovative 😢 I absolutely loved my eMac. It was a powerhouse and beautiful!
There was a touchscreen crt in my primary school (2010ish) and it blew me tf away as a kid
Your videos are amazing! and i love CRTs but touchscreen CRTs.. i thought the megatouch was the only touchscreen CRT :'D
Edit: amazing explanation aswell
It would be super for if you could get a ROM dump in that controller board. And some good photos of the IC set up.
This explains why Apple charged for so long their touch screen drivers before eventually baking it in for free
I have a troll touch eMac!! So crazy to hear it mentioned by someone else for the first time ever in the time I’ve had it! I never knew anything about it or that there were other models by various companies. Super cool stuff, I’m glad I clicked this video.
Maybe this will get some traction and make me feel less crazy were these ever in a fast food restaurant like burgerking in the play area. I have a weird memory with no Internet background of a blue all in one touchscreen computer.
You're not crazy - my local Burger King had a couple of them. Glad I ctrl + F'd the comments to see if anyone else remembered
@@robot_ave Ive been searching for this validation for close to 20 years thank you.
I want to see that case design make a comeback . The colorful transparent plastic case was awesome.
Wow, a touchscreen CRT? That's pretty based, no wonder apple never followed through with it 🤣
Woah, I didn't know they existed with native touch screens. I feel like I remember my elementary school having these screens that laid on top of the real screen that added touch functionality for kids that were unable to use a mouse due to disabilities, but I'm almost positive none of our iMacs had the touch screen built in..I can still kinda remember helping to put them into the computer lab and I feel like I would've remembered this for sure..lol, cool to learn about!
This is 100% a Jony Ive idea and “yes”. Steve Jobs absolutely hated touchscreen computers to his core. He said to in the 2008 MacBook Air keynote when they first introduced multitouch trackpads.
100% not Ive
Why did Steve jobs make a touchscreen phone then?
I wish old bowling lanes touchscreens were that good 😂
I didn't realise the Electric Light Orchestra had such a wide portfolio.
Wow, just wow. Nice job, MJD!
I don't know what else they did but elo was adding these for kiosks in higher ed on campuses. I think they sold in the thousands, at least. I know a few Apple customers used them with custom software packages in OS 9 and OS X as kiosks on campuses.
Didn't know a touchscreen iMac G3 existed. That is so cool!
glad you are back really enjoyed this video
I remember touchscreens back in the mid 90s, they used them at kiosks in the local mall where I live everytime they had some event or big movie on the theater so you could check screening times or whatever event was going on.
Very cool! Reminds me me of the then already old point of service terminals I used to service in the early 2000s. With novell netware running on dos and with touch displays. Macs were not a thing over here in that time, so sadly I have never seen a touch imac.
In 1994, EDS (Electronic Data Systems-Ross Perot’s company) demonstrated a 3D vector monitor that could detect where within a box the user was reaching in.
I saw this monitor demonstrated at the Info Mart in Dallas. EDS had an entire floor for their exhibits. The floor was laid out to look like a small town’s downtown Main Street. It was very fascinating!
They also had a large screen monitor that would allow the user to use what looked like a laser pointer to control a mouse cursor from across the room in Windows 3.1. If you touched the screen with the pointer, it behaved like a stylus and you could write on it. Of course, writing recognition was crude by today’s standards.
God that iMac background brings back some major memories!
Always love seeing these niche predecessors to technological features we now take for granted today.
CRT touchscreens were nothing unusual but they do were kinda novel. Poking a screen deliberately? Wild!
0:49 I *love* that reference! 😆
0:49 "Butt" (Shows Red moon Desert) 🤣 Very clever Michael!
I FINALLY FOUND YOUR CHANNEL I USED TO WATCH IT SO MUCH
as a kid it was always cool to find these kind of touch screens installed in malls/stores. I always wondered how they worked, without an overlay
This is probalby the coolest crt related thing I've ever seen!
(Grayson sees a thumbnail of a touch-based iMac and made a big smile on his face...) 😃😄
Ahh... The good old Mac. 😉 And man do I love seeing that touchscreen. That is awesome!
How, now that's pretty awesome and rare.
The 1st "nearly similar" thing I used was a DIY light pen using a diode stuck in a regular felt tip on a ZX Spectrum w/ CRT TV.
I remember we had that simplistic painting program you can see in other yt videos.
The original pen seems to be dk'tronics graphic lightpen. My dad did make a DIY lightpen we used back then, among with other DIY ZX Spectrum stuff.
Xerox PARC had some of those earlier. Lightpen, Trackpad, maybe even touchscreen and whiteboard.
Those just weren't ready for the masses or too expensive.
I never have seen a PC using a light pen, tho any CRT can use it technically.
Standard music cassette tape storage drives for PCs also are quite rare, I never have seen anyone using it and just in 2023 I have seen one in a picture.
Among faster floppies...but cassettes still are cool tech and cheap ofc.
W/ such PPC hardware I'd give some high res games a try which we didn't see in DOS this way.
Like Lemmings, Prince of Persia 1, Wolfpack, Comanche 1 CD.
There was also a WSAD key using game for Mac.
Lemmings need a higher version number or you'll miss music in difficulty 2-4 and like level 5+ you play.
I only have different G4 eMac, QuickSilver and PowerBook, but Classic Environment with 9.2 runs some old apps and games.
Will give 10.4.12 unofficial a try. Sadly 10.5 dropped Classic Environment, but 10.5.9 unofficial is said to be way faster, so a 2nd partition could make sense.
Those old machines are like made for ScummVM and DOSBox-SVN, if not using old Mac apps and games ofc.
My eMac G4 has FW 400 externally, so a FW 400 to IDE case would make it fast using an SSD or just install other OS, maybe even 10.5.9 on this 700 MHz G4 eMac.
Well, I prefer 10.3.9 or 10.4.11, maybe 10.4.12, because of Classic Environment w/ 9.2 app/game compatibility.
There were several custom mod for MacBook 1,1 and newer many years ago called ModBook, but these are'nt the standard models and very expensive.
Tho I think those just use resistive or capacitice overlay screen foils, not waves. Not sure...
I guess it's just similar to Fujitsu and Panasonic ToughBooks screens.
This original hardware will raise in value, even if it's defective. Imagine there's only one left in like 20 years.
Lol several early Apple mice were just aweful having only one button. At least the one you showed and the "soap" mouse which has the button at the bottom and short cable also.
You had to buy the keyboard with integrated USB Hub or USB enhancement cable to use the mouse.
That's interesting tech using simple waves. I saw an Apple patent for a blind keyboard using the same tech with a phone.
Imagine you lay your phone flat onto the table and just write next to it on the table (not like the LASER projected one, but just somewhere in front of it).
Text correction does the rest. It's just not ready to be released, but some day it will be used.
About finding old tech's information: Google's algorithms, SEO and similar stuff is actually hindering us to find qualified old informations.
Google optimizes the search outputs in a way they optimize their money gatherings. They show you what most people are interested in and what makes you most addicted to use the internet for a longer time. That's the sad reality.
Since like 5-10 years or so you'll find more results about rare stuff and real user knowledge on reddit than on Google, tbh.
And ofc. it was rare even back then.
Macs even were so rare in Europe, that many people didn't know the Apple brand exists before seeing the massive ads about MacBook or iPod.
I heard about many things like Amiga, Atari, BeOS, OS/2, Solaris next to Linux, BSD and ofc. DOS and Windows, but nearly nothing about Apple for decades.
It was like Microsoft was omni-present and Apple didn't existed. There were literally no Apple ads in Europe.
We read many magazines in 486 to Pentium III/4 times, but we never saw any Apple ads in those.
I once tried to gather some information about add-in Pentium III PCI cards, but wasn't lucky, searched for days w/o finding anything about those.
I found some with 486 add-in PCI cards, but not with Pentium III "PCs in a PC".
You could use ScummVM with a touchscreen. Well, it may be not ergonomic to try find locations for hours holding up your arms.
But it's one of those apps which actually use touchscreen alot. I use an Android tablet with capacitive pen or Samsung Note S pen for that.
It's a bit more portable. Tho a plutonium battery add-on would make this iMac also quite portable.
There's an old ad I just saw on yt showing a lady carrying an older Mac in a bag riding a bicycle, lol.
Commodore SX-64 were kinda portable.
GM made some Buicks with a touch screen CRT radio in the 80s.
I used to repair these screens back in the day - usually took me under 30 seconds to have them up & running again!
Thank you for making this video. I have an elo touchscreen blueberry iMac 350.. I actually have a video of it on my channel because it's awesome.. But it's short. And the hard drive sounds/sounded like it could go at any minute. I got it from a friend, who I think found it on the side of a street if I remember right.😱 But your explainer is excellent!
Oh wow, I remember finding your video when I started doing research for this project! That's incredible that it was found on the side of the road.