Ericsson has just pulled the covers off a concept PC that takes the all-in-one concept and design minimalism to a whole new level. The spartan machine doesn't have a screen or a keyboard, and instead opts to use projections for both.
It's dubbed the Spider, and it's Ericsson's guess at the PC we'll be using in 2020--it's on the left in the image. For this demo incarnation, Ericsson used currently available picoprojector and laser-projected keyboard technology to mock together how the machine would perform--and presumably there's no motherboard and Intel CPU chugging away inside that cylindrical case. But the idea is that electronics and optical tech will have evolved enough over the next ten years so the final Spider will be self-contained in an even skinnier cylinder with tripod legs (pictured on the right.)
The resulting machine is part laptop, part desktop PC--there's essentially no reason to classify it as one or the other, considering its meager mass and easy portability. It's presumably part home theatre PC too, given that projector technology should easily be able to beam out a 60-inch display by 2020. With another 10 years behind projected keyboard tech, there's no reason it shouldn't be more usable than the slightly clumsy versions that exist now, either.
There's certainly some logic in this thinking, and it represents one destination for the current trend in PC design simplification. Who would employ this sort of design, though? Sony? HP? Perhaps we should look at the Mac. Apple aficionados have pretty much a single person to thank for the sleek, clean, and almost Zen-like lines that nearly every Apple product now sports: Designer Jonathan Ive (on our Most Creative People list this year). He's responsible for the styling changes that have reduced the iMac from a sweet but chubby multicolored beast to its current screen-with-a-computer-behind slenderness. But dear Jon must be jealous of Ericsson's effort, which does away with the screen and even the wireless keyboard of the newly refreshed aluminum iMacs. Or maybe he'll be inspired by the idea, and get wiggling on adapting Spider's concept into a unibody brushed aluminum shape--and working it into the next-but-several iMac refresh.
[Via Gizmodo]
Related Stories: | Topics:Innovation, Minimalist PC, ericsson, Spider, projectors, picoprojector, 2020, jonathan ive, Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson, Apple iMac, Apple Inc., Technology, Computer Hardware and Peripherals |
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Recent Comments | 3 Total
November 1, 2009 at 10:56am by Ash Sangamneheri
Belive it or not I sketched almost exactly the same concept in my old notebook 7 years back! Good to see others better placed than I thinking on the same lines :)
November 2, 2009 at 5:33am by Kit Eaton
@Ash. Heheh. Sweet. It's a neat bit of thinking from Ericsson... but I suspect the PCs we'll be using in ten years will be hard to imagine. Not necessarily so freakishly different from the ones we've got now, I mean--more that 10 years of innovation, product evolution, style drift, and use changes will have a cumulative but odd effect.
November 3, 2009 at 1:35am by Ash Sangamneheri
When I had the idea, I was thinking more of a minimilist smartphone design, than a PC. I thought the phone should be the size of a fountain pen. To make a phne call, you could use a circular dial on the pen to choose the number to dial. And use messaging, calendar,web apps, it could be placed on the table using the folding tripod legs with a lazer projected keyboard and screen display on the table surface.
Hopefully one day we see such a smart phone :)