Our Rivals are Speechless: The Apricot Portable

Here's an advert for the Apricot Portable - the first portable computer anywhere to offer a speech recognition system, with a four-thousand word vocabulary and the ability to understand accents "from Glasgow to Grosvenor Square".

It was also unusual in that all the components - keyboard, base unit and optional tracker-ball mouse - were connected to each other using infrared, like a TV remote control.

It was a portable in the sense at the time, which essentially meant it was light enough to carry around - although it still weighed in at 13 pounds, or 6 kg. It also lacked batteries and so still had to be plugged in. 

The Portable was launched at around the same time as the company's Apricot F1, with both micros sharing the speech-recognition capability.

ACT's founder and managing director Roger Foster was something of a fan of Artificial Intelligence, and saw intelligent front-ends for software as increasingly important. 

He also clearly saw the coming together of speech processing and AI, saying in an interview in November 1984's PRAC that:

~"I think when you put AI together with speech recognition then you really are starting to get a new generation of computers. I think the progress of computers over the next five to ten years is going to be dictated by how easy they are to use. Cost will not be a problem. [Future machines will be] very graphical and with speech recognition; after three to seven years artifical intelligence will become significant".

It was built around an Intel 8086 CPU and so could run either MS-DOS, or the alternative CP/M-86 operating system. 

ACT had considered various architectures, such as Motorola's [!68000] family, for its future needs as it indended to stay "at the sharp end of technology", but seemed content to stick with Intel, with Foster stating:

~"ACT does have a deep regard for the Intel family. Inevitably we will use the newer chips as they become freely available from Intel, and that means the [!80186|186], [!80286|286] and in due course the [!80386|386]. I think the 68000 is a very nice piece of silicon; unfortunately the big software base is on the Intel chip family, and I can't see anything to change that[source: "From accounts to Apricots", PRAC, November 1984, p. 80].


The Apricot Portable retailed for £1,695 - about [[1695|1984]] in [[now]].