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Apple Macintosh 128k prototype with 5.25-inch Twiggy floppy drive for sale on eBay
Apple's Macintosh took many forms over the years, from its initial concept by Jef Raskin as a $500 appliance that contained a built-in keyboard, printer and 5-inch display, to its ceremonious debut in 1984 with an inflated price that was five times this initial vision. For a period in the Mac's development, it was assumed that the computer would feature Apple's proprietary Twiggy 5.25-inch floppy disk drive, which also came as standard issue on the original Lisa. Just recently, an extremely rare prototype of the 128k Mac with a Twiggy drive has surfaced on eBay, but with an opening bid of $99,995, this antique is beyond what most of us could ever afford.While the Twiggy disk could store an impressive 860KB of data, it was also notoriously unreliable -- so bad, in fact, that one engineer responsible for the drive remarked to Steve Jobs, "Take out your .45 and shoot the friggin' horse in the head." Ultimately, the company did just that, and the original Macintosh shipped with a 3.5-inch drive from Sony that could write only 400KB to its not-so-floppy disks. While this prototype will attract only the most affluent of bidders, the rest of us can enjoy the priceless photos of what might've been.
Sony Ericsson "Twiggy" seems to leak into the wild
Sony Ericsson has a world-renowned reputation for being unable to keep a lid on its stuff, and the trend appears to be continuing with the "Twiggy" -- a phone that seems destined to replace the aging W350. This bad boy was actually first spotted way back in March -- curiously leaked in Sony Ericsson's own marketing materials, no less -- but this time around it looks like we have a unit somewhere out there in the real wild ("IRL" as those particularly internet-savvy folks out there might say). No word on specs just yet; regardless, though, we're just pleased to see that the company appears to still be committed to this niche form factor most manufacturers won't touch with a ten-foot pole.[Via Just Another Mobile Phone Blog]
Whoops! Official Sony Ericsson press shot seems to leak W350 successor
Yo, Sony Ericsson, make sure all of your marketing folks are talking to one another, alright? Remember, communication is golden -- a simple email could've been all it took to avoid leaking a new, previously-unknown device through your own product shots. It seems that the press materials for the MS500 speaker contained this little gem, which is allegedly "Twiggy" -- the W350's eventual successor. That's all we know at this point, but the W350's over a year old now, so we can definitely buy that there's something in the works. Couldn't they have at least been bothered to take off the protective plastic thingies?
