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Apple's First Flops
Sabah Arif writes "Apple began the eighties with two major flops under its belt: the Apple III and the LISA. Both machines were attempts at breaking into the business market. They were technologically advanced, but major flaws prevented their success."
I'd say two major flops are a pretty good hit/miss ratio compared to the number of products they've had out, 2:50 or so.
What about the Apple Pippin? Few people know about Apples ill-fated console release.
Yes! I listen to NYC Speedcore and do math at 3AM. I suggest you try it too.
I don't know if there are some Mac addicts here who can remember it, but the "AV" machines back then (660 AV and 840AV iirc) with their AT&T 3210 DSP, GeoPort, etc... were nicknamed Mac III
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And of course were an horrible flop
It's funny because back then, the nickname "Mac III" made a lot of people associate it with Apple III, and there was, in the Mac hackers community, a bad feeling about it
Apple: Never again use "III" in a product name
Ben.
Disclaimer: I'm an Apple fan, owner, and former employee (certainly not a high-level one, though).
That said, Apple screws up a lot, particularly in first versions of a new product. As the article says, the Lisa was a flop, but it led to the original Mac, which led to the real hit, the Mac II.
The Mac Portable was a terrible product--but it led to the Powerbook, which defined the laptop computer. The Cube was overpriced and didn't have a market, but it led to the Mini, which is kicking ass.
The iPod was a hit from the jump, but the Newton was dead from its announcement date (we knew it was in trouble when they started handing them out as employee awards).
You just cant beat 1980s technical support. A friend of mine use to work for Cray back in the 80s. When the systems timing wasn't just quite right a technician will go to the system and cut the wire a little shorter so the electrons will get there a little quicker. Technology back then if you ever compare the electronics were a lot bigger and more durable. large solder blobs to keep the chip in place with the board. An extra wire soldered on to fix a bug in the design. just filled with ICs. It is great stuff. With this type of stuff you can actually figure out how it works. Figuring that you has the specs of every IC.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The Lisa wasn't a commercial success but it certainly was a technological success, paving the way for the Mac. (If you haven't seen a picture of one, google around... they looked a bit like an original Mac (aka 'Mac Classic') rotated through 90 degrees. It had a revolutionary WIMP interface. I remember as an awestruck almost-teenager reading a breathless review in the UK's then only PC mag, "Personal Computer World" which said "the only bad thing we could find to say about it is that some of the icons look a little whimsical. How long could you look at a whimsical icon before it becomes irritating?" It was also over eight grand sterling, four times the price of the ugly, clunky CGA IBM PCs that were the competition...
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
Oh no that wasn't.
//s and did very well. It introduced a number of additions that eventually made their way into the Mac world, such as ADB input bus. It had 16-bit graphics when Macs were still black and white, 16-chanel sound chip (the Mac had a 4-way back then I believe).
That machine was the last of the Apple
That machine would have made Apple big, had they had not spent all their marketing efforts onto the Mac (whose hardware was inferior in many areas to the GS, but whose OS was superior).
Only one picture was ever officially published of the Giotto stylus/tablet as I remember, and I'm not sure if it was a Newton on steroids or fully functional PC, but as an artist, writer, and MAC enthusiast, I knew I wanted one. I could find no surviving references during a quick search. It is sad and wonderful seeing great ideas appear before their time even when they then die; the creative spirit is indomitable!
The Cube was overpriced and didn't have a market, but it led to the Mini, which is kicking ass.
If Apple had just priced the G4 Cube correctly it would have been a hit, because its desktop footprint is really not much bigger than the currently fashionable Mac Mini. And it would have allowed people to buy less-expensive monitors, keyboards and mouse pointers, too.
The iPod was a hit from the jump....
I have to disagree with that. It was only when the version for Windows that included USB 2.0 support came out and the unveiling of the iTunes Music Store that the iPod really took off in popularity.
Although PCs have the edge for power/price, hardware bang for buck is becoming less of a factor except for gamers. Chip speeds and memory sizes are starting to go past consumer requirements, even if you throw in HD video, so design and software are the key factors. This may be why we see Apple recapturing some market share.
There's enough of a market within homes, particularly digital homes, to drive Apple growth without business penetration. Apple is trying to be the new Sony and the hardware is a commodity; it's the software and design that are the real added values.
IMHO running OSX on "x86" doesn't necessarily imply generic beige boxes. For example, Apple could easily build its own x86 boxes and still maintain hardware control, or they could have someone else build boxes to a particular spec that would be OSX-x86 compatible. The Xbox and Xbox 360 are good examples of controlled x86 and PPC hardware from the "other guys".
What I think would be really cool would be a box that is designed specifically to run OSX-x86, but can also run XP and/or XP apps natively without emulation (dual boot, vmware, wine, ...).
BReading sites like this one, it seems pretty clear that while LISA was a flop in and of itself, the original mac would never have been a success without it. This is both in terms of personnel (several key people were involved with both) and ideas - there was a lot of cross-pollination (though it doesn't sound like the LISA people were happy about that). So as a product, LISA was a flop, but as an investment by Apple, I'd think it should be considered wildly successful.
I had a 660AV, and it was a nice machine- I liked it; it was an affordable 68040, and that's why I bought it (I believe- this was almost 10 years ago). Speech recognition was kind of cool, but didn't work all that well. The software modem stuff was crap, the DSP-powered fractals only exciting for about 5 minutes. It was one of the newer machines capable of loading its ROM into RAM for a very noticeable speedup, at the penalty of a couple MB of lost memory, and memory was megabucks at the time. Basically, Apple oversold the DSP capabilities, because virtually NOTHING came out that actually used the DSP, even though it was very quick. PowerPC came along, and everyone promptly forgot about the DSPs.
...but MAN oh MAN could that thing crash in spectacular ways. Why? Well, the main OS would crash, but the DSP would keep chugging along, but would get garbage from the main system...and you'd get an incredible video acid trip, along with all sorts of squeals, static, etc from the audio. One time, my soft-modem went completely bonkers, going on+off hook like crazy until I pulled the plug.
Please help metamoderate.