Apple’s MacPhone reborn as a Homepod with 7-inch screen?

The MacPhone designed by Hartmut Esslinger in 1984

Way back in 1984 Frog Design founder Hartmut Esslinger was designing products for Apple. Now one of those products appears to be becoming part of the future of the company.

Is it a Mac, is it a phone, is it a iPad, is it a HomePod ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

A recent report from one of the two guys who file so many stories some speculate they may live in Tim Cook’s filing cabinet now claims Apple plans a HomePod with a 7-inch screen for 2024.

Now, while that sounds like a pair of concepts that don’t really fit together, perhaps they actually do and if you think about it such a hybrid child between an iPad mini and a fantastic audio system could actually tick many of the same boxes as a 1984 Esslinger product design: MacPhone.

That product never shipped, but a HomePod with an integrated display would be quite an interesting reflection of the ideas that went into the MacPhone.

What was the MacPhone

You see, MacPhone was a small, screened Mac with an attached telephone and wired pointing device.

You can find pictures here and if you want more insight you can still find second user copies of Esslinger’s book, Design Forward.

All this happened way before the internet, and I guess the idea was to have a business-focused device that lets you make calls and take notes.

What could be the HomePod hybrid?

I suppose the purported HomePod product would do something similar, except you’d use an Apple Pencil instead of a cursor, and wouldn’t use a handset, just AirPods or the built in speakers and mic. You’d probably use your iPhone to carry the call.

It would contain a fantastic sound system (which the HomePod is), would let you access Apple services, and would have a connected interface.

If it is connected and it needs to be, it’s also reasonable to think it would have a camera that may also be used for video conferencing and FaceTime calls, replicating the basic computing and phone calls of MacPhone and adding media services and brilliant sound.

I guess it would also act as a useful smarthome controller, HomeKit hub and other features.

One step beyond?

The leak also thinks Apple is working with another concept, a device that combines iPad, Apple TV, and HomePod. (Which to me sounds a little like a gesture-controlled TV set, but what do I know?)

Moving forward looking at the past is always interesting, but think back to what things were like when Esslinger conceived of MacPhone: There was no internet, Apple the company was just eight years old and Steve Jobs, who hadn’t at that point been ousted, wanted to make well-designed, good-looking products.

He also wanted them to share a design ethic.

[Also read: 8 Steve Jobs Patents That Changed Our World]

That’s why Esslinger was called in, to make design things work as well as technology things.

(Later, when Jobs was ousted, Esslinger broke his Apple contract and joined him at NeXT, but that’s another story).

For me, the MacPhone concepts resonate quite well with some of the ideas Apple is probably thinking about as it tries to find an evolutionary direction for HomePod, and while so much about it will be different, the essence of the idea seems a little the same.

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