Picture of Unlaunched Apple Tablet [1990]

TechCrunch has obtained an exclusive photo of the tablet Apple failed to launch years ago. The device, dubbed Pen Mac, is being held my Glam CEO Samir Arora who worked on the project while employed by Apple.

The project was developed by Apple engineer Paul Mercer; however, it was given the axe by then CEO John Sculley. Sculley signed an agreement with Sharp to work on the Newton and there was no room at the company for competing hand-held computing projects.

"The Pen Mac was a fully functional Mac computer (it even played the Mac startup chime) with a pen based touch screen. The screen itself was identical to the Mac Portable, but with the addition of pen touch. And of course the case was a lot smaller than the Mac Portable. The Pen Mac was supposedly not much more than one inch thick. Users could plug in a keyboard and mouse or easier input."


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