Small but tough.
Open
Mybook is the lightest portable mac ever. Small, light and semi-rugged, you can bring it everywhere.
As the perfect companion, it carries all your documents, contacts, appointments, mails and bookmarks.
Always connected to the internet through wifi, it’s all the knowledge of the world at the reach of the arm.
It as its roots deeply in Alan Kay Dynabook’s dream.
Folded
Mybook is the ideal book and news reader when in portrait mode.
The touch-sensitive screen is readable in bright daylight thanks to the use of a new transflective generation of LCD screen.
You can read ebooks and web pages or work with you Word and Excel documents anywhere.
Offline, you can even read web pages you’ve marked “to read later”. They are especially fetched and stored by Safari for you.
L shaped
The crisp and clear 11 inches wide LCD screen is perfect to watch movies and TV shows bought on ITMS.
Folding
No complicated hinge, The screen rotates 180°.
In that position, keyboard and trackpad are inoperative and the screen goes in portrait mode.
Special keys
There are two keys on the screen, readable from both side (for left or right-handed).
One is used to emulate the left-click and displays a contextual menu.
The other one, the toolkey button, is especially intended for mybook and displays a toolbar which change according to the context.
For example it brings a type-in area when the cursor is in text mode.
Keyboard
As industrial keyboards, mybook's keys are not sensitive to dust and water and can’t be easily ripped-off.
Stylus
Mybook’s stylus is set in a trap that
uncovers when the screen is flipped.
Very simple, 100% plastic, you can lose it many times as it will cost you almost nothing to replace it.
Goals
Corners
Weight and size
By using a Very
Low Voltage processor
we can have much smaller batteries.
By using a very light material for the case.
By getting rid of the dvd player.
In gum, interchangeable, they exist in all sorts of colors.
Very light
Less than 3 pounds. Because a book can’t be too heavy, the lighter it is, the longer you can keep it in your arms.
Robustness
By using a resistant material for the case.
The feeling of robustness is also reinforced by the gum corners.
Readability
By using a transflective LCD screen that can use the ambient light to be read.
Price
By choosing a low cost processor.
By designing the motherboard to be used in another form factor.
No DVD player and small batteries thanks to the low power consumption.
Small
Less than half an inch thick.
Robust
Almost rugged, it can be carried everywhere without fear of being damaged.
Readable
As easily as a book, it can be read in obscurity or bright daylight.
Inexpensive
It is specially inexpensive to have the broadest audience.
Power adapter
The power adapter is very thin
to accommodate the design of mybook
and be put aside it in a bag.
The cord is retractable.
Mybook can also be charged through firewire when connected to another computer.
Dimensions
Compared to the volume
of a 12 inches powerbook.
Mybook is also half the weight.
In text entry mode, pressing the toolkey button on the screen opens a pop up window where you can enter text.
Each letter is recognized as typed and is sent to the application behind.
You can also emulate other special keys.
In this example, Command and Shift A is sent to the application behind.
Aims
I began to work on myBook in November 2005, some weeks before the introduction of the new white macbook with which it shares some similarities, particulary in the keyboard.
myBook is my dream machine, the one I want to carry everywhere, on which I read news, put pictures and ideas, check emails and chat.
As Alan Kay’s dream, it is all the knowledge of the world at arm’s reach.
I think that in that form or another it prefigure the next media integration : paper.
Today, computer is music, tomorow video and the day after it will be paper, the last medium.
Handwriting