Clamshell Rack Charger

[Hrududu]

If you have a clamshell iBook (or a few iBooks) take a look at the bottom between the Apple logo and the battery. See those holes? Those are actually charging points for some sort of rack charger. Does anyone know if one of these charging stations was actually ever produced? Apparently Apple never made one, but perhaps some 3rd party did for schools or something.

http://support.apple.com/kb/TA25909?viewlocale=en_US

 

[beachycove]

The idea might have been originally that the eMate 300 charging rack (24 at a time, as I recall) could be adapted/ re-produced in a new form for use with the Clamshells – which followed the same basic design.... Obviously, talk of a mass charging rack means that Apple was fondly hoping for the same sort of sales in the schools system as it had achieved with the eMate. It is difficult to imagine what other setting such an envisaged charging rack could have been for, other than schools.

The eMate's charging contacts are at the right here.

As we know, it did not get any such sales. Once [a school system is] bitten [on the ass by Apple in cancelling the Newton project], twice shy?

 

[Anonymous Freak]

Apple later made a "Curriculum Mobile Lab" equipped with a bunch of white iBooks. That probably started planning before the clamshell era, designed to drop each clamshell into a slot with charging contacts.