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See Apple's unreleased 1993 W.A.L.T. phone in action
A 1993 prototype of Apple's W.A.L.T phone, or "Wizzy Active Lifestyle Telephone" can now be seen in a new video from Australian iPhone leaker Sonny Dickson. Apple unveiled the W.A.L.T. phone at 1993's MacWorld in Boston but it was never sold to the public. The early ancestor of the iPhone looked like a tablet but functioned as both a phone and a fax machine.
Google opens up its tool for testing your Android phone's lag
For years, Google has had tools to test the lag in Android and Chrome OS devices, letting it know when bad hardware or sloppy software is causing delays in touch input or voice commands. Wish you could check that lag yourself? As of now, you can: Google has posted the source code for WALT, its latency timer. While you'll need to build some Arduino-based hardware to perform the tests, Google promises that the whole thing will cost you less than $50. You won't need to go all-out and recreate the company's TouchBot, then. True, this will mostly be useful to developers who need to check their code, but it could come in handy if you've ever wanted to prove that a phone was unacceptably sluggish.
Valiant Hearts 'interactive comic' gratis with iOS version
Walt gets plenty of screen time in Valiant Hearts: The Great War, but no one's going to blame you for wanting to see more of the adorable, four-legged sidekick. Fortunately, Valiant Hearts' iOS breed of players have earned a related treat: according to the Ubiblog, an "interactive comic book" starring Walt and his sister will be offered for free on November 6 to anyone that purchases or already has Ubisoft's emotional war story on iOS devices. The comic book follows a canine contribution during the initial years of World War 1, with players helping the pair save lives and deliver messages via touch navigation. The blog post doesn't mention the comic's appearance beside the PS4, Xbox One, PS3, Xbox 360 or PC versions of Valiant Hearts, so newcomers and veterans without tours in iOS territory are facing the same $4.99 price tag for now. Our review of Valiant Hearts praised the adventure as "a war game that recalls, in memories both cheerful and sad, that there is a person first, then a soldier, and then - if you're lucky – a hero." [Image: Ubisoft]
Ultra-rare Apple WALT up for grabs on eBay
TUAW readers who are into collecting Apple devices are going to love this eBay find: a prototype of an unreleased product from 1993. The Apple WALT (Wizzy Active Lifestyle Telephone) was introduced at Macworld Boston in '93, the same venue where the ill-fated Newton MessagePad first went on sale. WALT, like Newton, also had a touchscreen, a stylus, and handwriting recognition. It was designed to be a companion to a home landline phone, and was designed in cooperation with BellSouth. Built into WALT were services like an address book, fax (remember that technology?), caller ID, custom ringtones, and online banking. To interact with all of these services, users worked with a customized version of System 6 with a HyperCard GUI in place of the Finder. According to the seller's description, "Back in 2008 PC World published a list of the "Top 15 Vaporware Products of All Time". The W.A.LT. was #1." While WALT was ogled by the public at Macworld Boston 1993, the device never went into production. This prototype, complete with a full printed user manual (so much for ease of use), is being sold by eBay user russel400. The WALT is priced at US$8,000 -- note that you'd better be handy with a soldering iron if you want to get it back to working order, as it has a few "loose connections" that have rendered it unusable. Of course, you could also spend that eight grand on sixteen brand new third-generation iPads...
Apple WALT prototype hits eBay, reminds us of a life with landlines
As it turns out, Apple too used to announce products at trade shows... only to never actually ship them. Back in the halcyon days of the early '90s, Apple revealed the WALT (Wizzy Active Lifestyle Telephone) at Macworld Boston, touting a fairly amazing feature set. Things like a touchscreen, handwriting recognition, fax support, an address book, caller ID, online banking and a speakerphone set it apart from the landline devices of its day, and being that it was co-developed with Bell South, it's pretty clear that your pops had his eye one at some point. Those looking to relive the corporate boom of one-nine-nine-to-the-tres can plunk down $8,000 of 2012's dollars at the eBay link below; just don't expect it to work out of the box, okay?[Thanks, TS]
Lost's Apple II up for auction
The Apple II computer from the hit show Lost was one of the things that unfortunately wasn't really answered as the series ended. I get that the Dharma Initiative was trying to contain a leak from the source, probably because of Jughead going off, but what was up with that scene of Michael supposedly chatting with Walt? How did Walt get to a computer, and why didn't a chat ever come up any other time? I'm sure there are theories running around out there, but I don't think the show ever provided a reasonable explanation for that one. Maybe you can film your own, though -- the actual Apple II plus from those scenes is being auctioned off later next month in Los Angeles by a group called Profiles in History. If you submit the winning bid, you'll not only get the computer from the set of the show, but also an Apple III monitor to go with it, and a Disc II floppy drive, along with a printout stating "system failure" from the show's big crash of Oceanic 815. The auction page doesn't say if it still works or not (which could be a good thing -- do you really want to punch the numbers in every 108 minutes?), or what the starting bid might be. But it would be cool to own both a piece of Apple history and an object from The Island, wherever that is. [via MacStories]
Mossberg hints at Flash update for iPhone
We know, we've all been clamoring for Flash support on the iPhone since before the thing even launched, and while we've seen subtle hints here and there suggesting that it would indeed come to fruition, now we've got someone to blame if our hopes are deflated. In a recent Q&A session, Walt Mossberg himself addressed the issue, and didn't make any bones about sharing Apple's future plans. Speaking directly about Adobe's Flash technology, Walt stated that "Apple says it plans to add that plug-in through an early software update," which he surmises "will occur within the next couple of months." Sadly, there was no elaboration beyond the aforementioned bit, but he certainly sounds confident about the iPhone eventually playing nice with Flash, no?[Via MacRumors]
You saw Lost right? (spoilers)
Did you catch the images in the "monster" as it faced down Eko? I don't have any screen grabs but Kevin might later, the'yre talking about it over on TV Squad also. Thanks to the high definition DVR I was able to make out the images as they flashed by, this wasn't so much of an HDTV easter egg as a Tivo-egg, because there's no way you would be able to see all the images without frame-by-frame. Church Eko as a child a woman the man he shot his brother and the gun an upside down picture of Eko coming out of the water after the plane crash the man who pushed him off of the missionary plane the woman who sold the figurines two flashes of Eko holding his dying brother Jesus on the cross All they need is a subplot about how Eko used to be in a wheelchair and he and Locke will officially be the exact same person. One of the best shows in HD is back and it should be an interesting rest of the season.
