That’s why this first iteration is in the 16e, the least important phone in the lineup, and one in which it won’t matter if the cellular performance isn’t up to snuff.
Turns out the “e” in 16e stands for experimental!
Interesting read overall.
Funny… the headline had me thinking “well, GeoPort wasn’t really a modem. Did Apple create a 1200 baud modem I’m forgetting about?”
Then it mentioned the 16e and I realized we were talking GSM modems.
There was definitely an Apple-branded modem for Apple II. Long before geoport. It had styling that would go well with the IIc or the IIgs
Edit: lots of modems, check the history section https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_USB_Modem
This article is clearly not news pfft
The Geoport Telecom Adapter was a “Winmodem” on steroids. Unfortunately the software used to drive it couldn’t keep up with advances in modem speeds. You can’t get 56k speeds from 68k emulation on a PowerPC 601.
Still a cool gadget. The modem got its power from the serial port, and could be used for faxing, and telecom as well (including voicemail and call routing).
There was even an ISDN version you could get at the time, though DSL and other tech would render that obsolete pretty quickly.
