That's because this was a product concept exercise. It's an exercise in thinking about functionality, design, and form and less about the underlying technology.
There was a period during the Scully era where Apple did a number of these concepts, most famously the "Knowledge Navigator" video.
This was circa 1987, but was looking ahead to 2000 and beyond with things like always-on background networking and video conferencing. 30 years later we're finally getting to some of the stretch concepts shown in the video, such as conversational interfaces like Siri.
Post-Scully and back into the Jobs II era, this stuff went away. And it's probably a good thing they did. Here's why:
"Commercial entities have no advantage in releasing concept products the likes of which they hope to subsequently sell. If the conceptual piece truthfully captures their “best” it can only tell their competitors how advanced they are and where they fall short. If it camouflages their true capabilities in an effort to mislead their competitors, then what value is it to others? In fact, the intention to mislead competitors is really the only effective reason for a commercial entity to publicly release concept products"
There was a period during the Scully era where Apple did a number of these concepts, most famously the "Knowledge Navigator" video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hb4AzF6wEoc
This was circa 1987, but was looking ahead to 2000 and beyond with things like always-on background networking and video conferencing. 30 years later we're finally getting to some of the stretch concepts shown in the video, such as conversational interfaces like Siri.
Post-Scully and back into the Jobs II era, this stuff went away. And it's probably a good thing they did. Here's why:
"Commercial entities have no advantage in releasing concept products the likes of which they hope to subsequently sell. If the conceptual piece truthfully captures their “best” it can only tell their competitors how advanced they are and where they fall short. If it camouflages their true capabilities in an effort to mislead their competitors, then what value is it to others? In fact, the intention to mislead competitors is really the only effective reason for a commercial entity to publicly release concept products"
https://counternotions.com/2008/08/12/concept-products/