Check Out LG’s iPad… From 2001

Eleven years ago at CeBIT 2001, LG demoed a product called the “Digital iPad”, a wireless, stylus-controlled 8.4-inch tablet powered by Linux. Perhaps if the company had more charisma on-tap at the time, we’d all be using similarly-branded products from LG today. As this is clearly not the case, it’s fair to say the device didn’t really take off.

According to a PC World story from January of that year, the Digital iPad supported 10Mb/s speeds at 100m and came with a USB port and a Compact Flash slot. A 200MHz StrongARM chip from Intel did the grunt work, with LG looking to double the speed and integrate voice recognition and a “videophone function”.

Videophone? Was that even a thing? It sounds so… 90s.

If LG was keen to tap Apple on the shoulder for the use of the name, you’d think it would have done so by now. Apple’s already gone through the motions of securing the “iPad” trademark, paying out a handsome sum to Fujitsu in 2010, which it used for a phone / point-of-sale device called the “iPAD”. Then, of course, there’s Proview, which Apple sorted out with a $US60 million payment earlier this year.

On a related note, has anyone calculated how much cash has gone into settling trademark and patent disputes this year? With the recent Apple versus Samsung judgement, that kitty must be pretty fat right now.

[Linux For Devices, via Reddit]