The Prototype TOUCHSCREEN iMac… From 1999
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 ต.ค. 2024
- It might look like a regular iMac G3... but it sure doesn't act like one! A while back, I got my hands on this extremely rare touchscreen Mac. And in today's episode, we're going to explore its history and see how it works!
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Action Retro's Slot Loading Video: • I Found a Weird Touch ...
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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 :(
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 🙄
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
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
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
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.
this is why I love innovative vintage tech , you are always surprised to see technology ahead of its time
2 mjd vids 2 days in a row? Impossible.
I know right!
Yea it feels impossible
Ikr!
Yeah that odd
No. It's necessary
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?
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.
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.
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.
apple went from allowing other businesses modify and sell their machines to not letting people repair their own devices.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
you are a legend for archiving the CD. Thanks a lot even if I don't have one
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
This is an awesome video. Incredible work!
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... :(
CRT touchscreens were nothing unusual but they do were kinda novel. Poking a screen deliberately? Wild!
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.
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.
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.
It's too bad Elo and Apple didn't collaborate more directly and make a "blue sky" colored model
I used to repair these screens back in the day - usually took me under 30 seconds to have them up & running again!
Jeff Lynne really is a man of many talents. They call him Mr Blue Sky Thinking
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.
6:51 That's why the iMac is much more expensive when you bought it. Because it's unique.
(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!
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.
All the tech is the controller board. The Mac just sees usb input with software handling the "virtual mouse" data.
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.
It would be cool to see the footage of side and back stickers including interface sockets of this machine.
I remember the colorful Macs of the 90's we had them at my elementary school.
I love how Michael says elo it's "eelo"
its insane to think that there was time when Apple heads were not obsessed with locking its software and hardware complicating lives for everyone, but rather encourage the tech community to mod and squeeze the most out of the platform... no to mention 3rd party collaboration programs. feels like Apple from a parallel universe where the money didn’t corrupt them and turned evil... 😬😬😬
This explains why Apple charged for so long their touch screen drivers before eventually baking it in for free
It is sad to think that back then, Apple really did care about innovation. Nowadays, they're just plain greedy.
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!
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.
Fun Fact: ELO makes the touchscreens for Coinstar kiosks
i'm honestly glad touchscreen laptops and desktops never caught on. its just not an intuitive experience having to constantly touch the screen that's mounted in an non-ergonomic way
elo makes some of the best touch screens.
Dats weird to be this early without being subscribed
Wow, just wow. Nice job, MJD!
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
The fact Apple resist touchscreen computers to this day confounds me
This is amazingly cool! I have an iMac G3 Indigo myself (as well as an eMac) and this is so darn cool! Awesome video Michael! 😁
At first I assumed that it would use some miserable resistive overlay. However, that acoustic wave system seems fantastic!
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!
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?
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.
I have never knowingly used an ultrasonic touchscreen. However, at one time I owned a Compaq (I think) PC which had a resistive touchscreen. Resistive touchscreens for the most part suck. Because they have to be softer to detect the touches, the screen overlay was plastic instead of glass. That diminished the screen clarity. Sensitivity was not very good, so it required a dumb stylus. After being initially intrigued by it, I rarely used the resistive touchscreen feature.
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
We need a PC case based off of the style/aesthetic of the G3s
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 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
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 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!
Question, is it like a capacitive screen that works with conductive stuff only? How about multi touch?
On those CRTs you could lower the resolution to 640x480 and get bigger UI elements. Would probably make for a better touch experience.
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.
I didn't realise the Electric Light Orchestra had such a wide portfolio.
You should donate it to the computer museum
ngl, I want to see you play RuneScape classic on it.
What an interesting piece of tech!
face reveal
The pressure sensitivity is really cool, I always think that could have musical implications
I got to use a mac once in school like 20 years ago and it looked just like this I would be beyond embarrassed if ti was touchscreen cuz I had no idea.
Wow, a touchscreen CRT? That's pretty based, no wonder apple never followed through with it 🤣
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
Oh wow! I didn't know this existed. Neat!
Buick was putting touch screens in its Reatta in 1989
Thinking back I think the New York State fair used to have a touchscreen iMac in one of the exhibits. I really hope I'm remembering this right? And I didn't have any overlays on the screen so it would've had to of been this style. There's also a company that was retrofitting iMacs with touchscreens for impairments. And I myself find Mac OS X pretty well usable with a touchscreen assuming you can get one that's driver compatible. There are a few downsides when using multiple monitors though mouse cursor needs to be on second/touchscreen otherwise clicks are so registered on primary screen.
Ooof I can't imagine being a super market or something and spending THAT MUCH extra money to have a touch powered Macintosh point of sales system 🤣🤣
I’m just surprise the fact that a freaking usb call the air bar can make ur screen touch screen by scanning your finger while that apple didn’t make the Mac Studio display touch screen but make their computer even thinner
wow a ufo background .. its like apple was trying to tell us something
When i was a kindergarten child i was in an indorplayground and there was a wooden box with a touch screen with kids games to play on and i got the software to crash and then there was a windows xp home screen and it was in 2014 or something 😂
this is a awesome video!! 1999 touch screen
Do you have braces now or having microphone issues? It sounds a bit fuzzy when you spoke in this video.
I wish old bowling lanes touchscreens were that good 😂
And then to think we had to suffer through the Puck Mouse.
it'd be cool to see a tocuhscreen mac! good job :D
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.
Originally owned then sold then bought by friend then friend died then bought back again then sat in garage and then sold!
i came here as fast as i could!!! i had heard about these a long time ago and i never knew you owned one! 🧡
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.
That background picture: disc shaped ufo
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!
The prophecy! Right after Action Retro told us about it, it's up!