Every few years, some new technology or application comes along that everyone's sure will miraculously conquer every obstacle in its path and, in some ludicrously short time period, make existing technology obsolete. And then, long after all the media hype fades away and investors' checkbooks disappear, well, nothing happens.
So what? Who cares? Why bother talking about our industry's bombs, the next big things that weren't? Well, for one thing, it's interesting to note how hungry we all are for news about new technology. It gets us excited. We complain about media hype, but love the hype.
It's also fascinating how existing technology has this way of hanging on by its fingernails way past the point of its predicted obsolescence. More importantly, we learn more from mistakes than we do from successes. That's part of the scientific method: hypothesis, test, learn, repeat until you get it right.
Lastly, those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. Those are all good enough reasons for me. So here are my top 10 technology flops. But first, some ground rules. I stuck to the last 50 years or so. And I avoided specific company products. We've heard enough about the IBM PCjr, Apple Newton, Microsoft Bob, and OS2 to last 10 lifetimes. ... Read more
Anyway, in the midst of sitting at a street cafe on Belden Lane on a sunny day in San Francisco we were more focused on the hot little item in our hands than the hot weather here. But we paused for a moment to reflect on how successful Apple has been at creating such hype, buzz and popular attention for the iPhone.
We had to think long and hard as to the last time as when popular media and imagination was captured with a mere product launch. Cabbage Patch Kids? Beanie Babies? No, the last time, we agreed, was probably the launch of Windows 95. It's pretty funny because, as Mac-philes will note, Macs had a great graphical OS for some time already. To me, the iPhone is the difference between having a DOS-based user interface and suddenly fast-forwarding to Mac OS X. That leap also happens to be the difference between my Razr and the iPhone. Hence the paradigm-shift comparison.
But we mused that the iPhone launch is somewhat more social than that for Win95. Sure, you have to bring an iPhone home to activate it, but it is inherently a mobile device, unlike an OS, which was inherently stationary. The iPhone is to be pulled out at dinner parties, lunches and on the bus. Will it become ubiquitous as an Evian bottle? What's keeping it from this level of usage, at least today, is the price. As such, the iPhone may well assume its place as a yuppie/guppie status-symbol accessory that just happens to have the functionality of no other device up to this point. The first must-have of the 21st century? Perhaps, but how cliche.
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