Wrist Mac
Scotto passed along a few pics of this fun little item he owns. I couldn’t find much info about it on the web, so I knew my website collection of oddities would be a perfect place to display these.
From what I can gather, this is a data organizer wristwatch from about 1992. It’s not a real Mac computer or anything, the name apparently comes from its ability to share data with a Macintosh.
Scotto says it communicates via AppleTalk to the host Mac.
Comments
Close! The WristMac dated from 1998, and communicated with the Mac via the serial port (which was also used for Appletalk, hence the confusion.) It was a re-packaging of the Seiko RC-4000, with new software and manual. The team that put it together was a pretty impressive one for the time, including moi (David S. Rose, later to found AirMedia, the wireless push technology company during the dotcom boom), Dennis Brothers (author of the BinHex protocol that later morphed into .hqx), Neil Shapiro (founding editor of MacUser magazine), Richard Reich (author of the first HP12c desk accessory for Mac), et al.
The very first units were purchased by Bill Atkinson (part of the original Mac team, now a photographer) and Fred Smith (founder of FedEx). In August 1991, NASA flew a set of slightly modified units (based on a later, classier model with a metal chassis, which we called the Executive WristMac) aboard the Space Shuttle on mission STS-43, after which the WristMac was popularly referred to as "the Space Shuttle watch".
I've stil got some of the original marketing materials, and (out of nostalgia) still wear one as my every-day watch!
Whoops! Make that "1988"...only four years after the birth of the Mac!
Hey David, are you still around? I'd love to see some of these marketing materials!
Do you happen to have copies of those disks in digital form? I've got an RC-4500 and would love to see it interface with a Mac.
Hi zeroeth, I have the copies of the WristMac disks in digital form. You need a few other things to be able to connect your RC-4500 to your old Mac. Ex Machina
supplied a cable with Mac serial on one end and something like a stereo mini plug on the other end. They also supplied a little bracket [that has a port for the cable]
which snapped on to the watch. You also need to find a few [Apple HyperCard] applications into which you enter the data you want to transfer to your RC-4500.
I have digital versions of a few of these programs. Let me know if this info is clear or if you have other questions. leicadog99
Found some of the marketing on archive.org https://archive.org/details...
https://www.youtube.com/wat...