Jurassic Park - Tablet device on Nedry's desk?

[Rymo]

What looks like a tablet/ PDA device can be seen on the lefthand side of Nedry's desk. My closest guess is that it is a Motorola Envoy PDA. But, according to Wikipedia, the Motorola Envoy was not released until 1994. Does anyone else have any additional info on what this device is? Maybe it's a prototype or early overseas release of the Motorola Envoy?

It's the small black device behind Nedry's right elbow.

This is what the commercial release of the Motorola Envoy looked like.

 

[thd9791]

Good question, I even like that lamp behind him

That's funny it wasn't released until later, it looks so alike! If anyone finds out, I'd love to know too

 

[moviebuff5]

Could be a test model of the Envoy 100 someone at Silicone Graphics lent them. It certainly appears to be branded by Motorola. They had $875,000 worth of Silicone Graphics hardware, $350,000 from Apple, and $500,000 in additional hardware and software to equip and run the control room.

You have a 150 pictured, but from what I read there should not be that significant of a difference in the base of the Envoy between the 150 and 100. The production model appears to still have the two slots there, but not with the cutout (which likely broke on the test models).

 

[Rymo]

Thanks for the info!

 

[tokyospark]

Hello, just came across this older thread, but I can tell you definitively what that is on the desk. It's the design mock up from the final presentation to Motorola for the iRadio (name later changed to Envoy). It was designed by me when I was working at frogdesign in California. The head of frogdesign, Hartmut Esslinger met Spielberg on a plane and showed him this mockup. Steven asked if it could be used as a prop in the film, and Hartmut gave it to him. There were three configurations proposed, and this one was the one that Motorola had chosen to pursue. It was a design and engineering proof of concept for the hinge and folding mechanism. It doesn't have the external antenna as the original engineering spec had an internal loop antenna around the screen. Motorola discovered that a flat orientation limited reception, so the external one was added. The two slots were originally for PC cards, but this was later eliminated due to space restrictions.

 

[agliarept]

and this is why the RPF exists^ really great information shared by cool people. How awesome is that!!

 

[moviebuff5]

Indeed! Thank you for the information Tokyospark!

 

[tokyospark]

Glad to be of service! For once I got to supply some information, instead of just gobbling it up. Curious as to what's going to happen with Apple's new iRadio service announced this week, as I believe Motorola had a trademark for this name when we were developing this product. We even created a whole identity and marketing campaign based on iRadio before Motorola changed it to Envoy. Maybe Apple just bought it outright, like they did for iPad, which was owned by Fujitsu (my current employer).