Remember when we showed you a tablet dating from 1969? It was an iPad-like device spotted in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey and it turns out that Samsung mentioned this in their legal brawl with Apple. I have to remind you that for years now Apple and Samsung have been at each other’s throats after the Cupertino giant accused Sammy of copying its designs. And now we have one more proof they didn’t: a 1994 clip about a … tablet, found by the guys of cultofmac.
The judge that presides over the case between Apple and Samsung held up the Galaxy Tab and iPad side by side and asked people in court to tell which was which from a distance. He did that to prove it’s absurd to want to patent the exterior design of a slate. Basically, although the Galaxy Tab looks a bit like the iPad, the iPad looks a bit like the tablet in the 1969 movie and the “tablet newspaper” clip from 1994 below. 18 years ago, they predicted a device able to show digital books, digital newspapers, play video and audio, plus “be part of the audio life”.
There’s also a stylus in the mix, but Apple managed to get rid of that. Bloomberg is saying that Samsung may have drawn inspiration from Apple, but Apple seriously drew inspiration from the 1994 mockup here. And now I’m guessing that the Cupertino giant will show up with evidence that it had something to do with that clip… somehow…
