prototypes

The 2013 Mac Pro was notorious for being a radical departure from Apple's usual design acumen, sporting a form that was derisively compared to a trash can. It was also one of the very few Apple products to sport a glossy black finish, also a first for the Mac Pro line. It turns out that Apple has long been toying with the latter material as far back as 2007 and could have even debuted on a similar radical departure from its iPod line, the iPod Touch.

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Nintendo doesn't seem to be having the best of times this year when it comes to security. Following the hack of hundreds of thousands of Nintendo accounts back in April, the company experienced another data breach in May, this time yielding a massive amount of source code for many of its old games and consoles. While the gaming industry is still coming to grips with the full repercussions of this leak, some more enterprising individuals have apparently put in the work necessary to use that source code and build what they claim are prototypes of some of Nintendo's earliest franchises, including Super Mario, Star Fox, and even Legend of Zelda.

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For years, Apple's mobile and desktop worlds have been distinct and separate islands of their own. Lately, however, the company has been working to bridge the two together, like running iOS apps on Macs with Catalyst. It turns out that Apple's newly revealed ARM-based Silicon processor maybe smashing those two worlds together in more ways than one. A new leak has surfaced pointing to the almost dreamy possibility of an iPhone running on an Apple Silicon running macOS, possibly when connected to an external monitor, keyboard, and mouse.

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Before the iPhone, Apple's most iconic mobile device didn't even allow you to communicate. The iPod was, for many years, the gold standard for portable music players. Then along came the iPhone and, later on, the iPod Touch was born to catch up. The two worlds would come together a couple of times but there was a time when the iPod Touch almost went off on its own direction again, putting a camera on the back of the iPod Touch 3 where no iPhone or iPod Touch ever would.

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Today a leak of a TCL smartphone prototype shows a bit of what was apparently going to appear at MWC 2020. That's the tech conference that generally happens every year around this time, but was cancelled this year due to concerns over nCoV-2019 / COVID-19 (AKA novel coronavirus). The device you see here was leaked from what CNET's Jessica Dolcourt describes as a "trusted source" - aka this isn't just some fan-made device based on a concept, it's quite likely from a source within TCL (or a TCL-adjacent group).

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TCL has revealed a new foldable phone prototype at CES 2020, a clamshell that opens up to reveal a 7.2-inch flexible touchscreen, and one which already has a few advantages over the Samsung Galaxy Fold. While the device is still at the "functional prototype" stage, and won't launch quite as you see here, there are already good reasons why what TCL has achieved should get Android fans excited.

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The new Ford Bronco could well be the most hotly-anticipated car from the automaker this decade, and so consider our attention grabbed by this Ford Bronco R race prototype. Unveiled to confirm Ford is headed to the Baja Peninsula for the Baja 1000 rally, the bolshy off-roader promises hints of the upcoming road SUV we're expecting next year.

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BMW doesn't have an all-electric Tesla Model S rival in its range, but the German automaker is teasing just how such a car might perform with its latest "Power BEV" prototype. Unveiled alongside the striking BMW Vision M NEXT today, the so-called trial vehicle may look like a 5 Series sedan from the outside, but under the familiar sheet metal are a whole lot of electric horses.

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Remember the Microsoft Courier? What was once fodder for the imagination seems to be taking hold of the PC market. While OEMs are not so hasty to jump on the foldable screen train pushed by Samsung, Huawei, and Lenovo, they are, instead seeing some merit in laptops that offer two screens. Or at least one and a half. While not a PC maker itself, Intel invests in building designs that manufacturers will be interested to make for Intel-powered computers. And, according to Intel, those manufacturers seem to very interested indeed, especially in the Honeycomb Glacier dual screen gaming laptop.

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How many times have you been watching a sci-fi series or movie, and thought “I really wish that piece of tech existed”? We've all done that. But how many of us have actually gone on to create one of those gadgets, just to see if it would be useful? Google's Amit Singhal did exactly that.

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Onyx apparently has a smartwatch in the works, and though there aren't a lot of details on it at this point, a prototype has surfaced via the folks at ARMdevices. Though a smartwatch isn't notable in and of itself at this point, the prototype stands out amongst the competition because of its display: a true e-ink offering. Though the refresh speed on the prototype seems a bit too slow for everyday use, there are some obvious benefits to using an e-ink display rather than an LCD.

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Japanese tire giant Bridgestone is showing off a revamped model of their prototype Air Free tire at the 2014 Paris Auto Show. First unveiled in 2011, Bridgestone has been working hard to improve their invention, which works by replacing the air-filled rubber donuts of today with a single band of rubber wrapped around resin blades built to absorb shock and support a car's weight. As we can see from the photos, the tires have a similar to look to the spokes on bicycle wheels.

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