Every season of Apple TV’s “For All Mankind” begins the same for prop master Jaime Mengual: A meeting with co-creators and showrunners Ben Nedivi and Matt Wolpert and producer Ben McGinnis to discuss one prop — the Apple Newton.
Apple products and their use in film and TV have long been a source of conversation. Who can carry an iPhone on screen? Are bad guys forced to use nondescript phones and computers so as not to sow chaos with a device bearing Apple’s famous logo? Well, “For All Mankind” asks a different question altogether: Can its characters use a completely forgotten Apple product canceled two decades ago?
For those who didn’t go through a handheld personal assistant phase in the 1990s, the Newton was an early Apple mobile device that used a stylus-controlled touchscreen for digital scheduling and organization. But in a world of PalmPilots and BlackBerrys, it was toppled by flashier competition and discontinued in 1998 — even though it is credited with paving the way for the iPhone. And yet, in the alternate-history timeline that “For All Mankind” has been existing in for five seasons, where the American ambition to explore space never ran out of rocket fuel, the Newton is thriving as the iPhone of its time.
