An era in technology came to an end on October 5 when Apple founder and former CEO Steve Jobs passed away. His demise caused an outpouring of grief that went beyond tech circles - consumers crowded Apple Stores, politicians uttered platitudes, and fans built shrines and besieged social networks. No one was really surprised by the turnout, both in cyberspace and in the real world. Jobs had, after all, transformed entire product segments, and with it our lives, with his breakthrough innovations. He might not always have been the first one to get a particular idea (heck, portable media players and tablets existed well before the iPod and iPad) but he ensured that Apple's implementation was unmatched, with a sharp focus on design and user experience. However, not everything that Jobs touched turned to gold and changed our world. The man was human and made his share of bloopers. Fortunately for both him and Apple, he learnt from them too. Nimish Dubey takes a look at some of his products that were thundering successes and a few that were drop-dead duds.
Hit | Apple II (1977) Computers were supposed to be big, unmanageable and strictly geek territory. That changed with the Apple II as it packed in a monitor, a display, and a couple of disk drives. More importantly, it seemed as much at home in a household as in a high-tech laboratory. And it did not cost a bomb either. Easy to use and easy on the eye, this is considered by many people to have been the first mainstream personal computer, and the first step towards making a computer a part of our homes. Impact | The computer was yanked out of labs and brought into our rooms.
Miss | Apple III (1980) Far from replicating the success of the legendary Apple II, the Apple III is still considered to be one of the biggest engineering disasters of its era. Bugs and engineering defects undermined the computer, and the fact that one had to pick it up and drop it to settle the chips on it still makes people laugh.
Hit | Macintosh (1984) First publicised through a Ridley Scott "1984" commercial that many consider to be one of the greatest ever, the Macintosh poked fun at IBM and stunned users with a graphical user interface and a mouse. Working on a computer suddenly became a whole lot easier. And thanks to pre-installed applications like MacWrite and MacPaint, a whole lot of fun as well. Of course, it looked funky as hell -you could actually carry it around in a bag. Impact | Made the mouse and graphic user interface a part of computing.
Miss | Lisa (1983) Although Jobs is believed to have been moved out of the Lisa team in 1982, there are many who feel he was an important influence on the computer. Yes, it had great specs for its time and a graphical user interface, but at almost $10,000, it did not find many takers.
Hit | iMac (1998) When Jobs returned to Apple in 1996, the company had been written off as a hasbeen with a golden past and a bankrupt future. It needed a magical device. Jobs' answer was the iMac - a computer that blended the monitor with the CPU in one unit. It killed off the tangle of wires that were the trademark of desktop computers, and in best Apple tradition, it came in some incredibly classy colours. Critics complained about the specs and price, but users lined up to buy it as all they needed to do was plug one cable into the power socket to get it going. Impact | Paved the way for the all-in-ones that we see in the market today; spelt doom for bulky CPU towers.
Miss | Puck Mouse (1998) Jobs had a penchant for computer accessories that looked very different from the competition, as can be seen from the recent Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad. However, the ice hockey puck shaped Puck Mouse that accompanied the iMac was not just oddly shaped but difficult to use. Its translucent body was beautiful but its penchant to roll oddly sent it to an early grave.
Hit | iPod (2001) Portable media players that could store and play music off small hard drives had existed before 2001, but Apple's iPod made them uber cool. The iPod was pint sized and yet could store hundreds of songs. It had excellent battery life and, significantly, looked so much cooler than many of the portable music options in the market - not least because of the snow white e a r bu d s which accompanied it. Control was simple - you just had one button to press and a scroll wheel was u s e d t o ch a n g e tracks and volume. Critics said it had no chance against the Walkman and Diskman, and users would not waste time transferring music to computers and then to a device. Oh, how wrong they were. The iPod now supports video and images, too, but it will always be known as the player that made music really portable.
Impact | Gave birth to the portable music player, which put thousands of songs in your pocket. Killed portable cassette and CD players.
Miss | Power Mac G4 Cube (2000) Has a computer ever looked more beautiful? The Power Mac G4 Cube was 8 inches in all dimensions, and was suspended in an acrylic enclosure. It packed in a decent processor, an optical drive, transparent speakers and just needed to be hooked to a display to get going. It was beautiful enough for the New York Museum of Modern Art to display, but consumers were not too impressed by the $1,799 price tag and the cracks that appeared in some of the outer casings.
Hit | iPhone (2007) Rumour had been rife that Apple would be coming out with a phone of its own after burning its fingers badly with the original ROKR. And it did just that with a total touchscreen device in 2007. The specs were not great but the experience was - you could zoom in and out by just pinching your fingers on the surface, boring menus were replaced with snazzy icons, and Web browsing was awesome. The competition sneered and then watched in disbelief as users picked it up for its looks and ease of use. And when it got an App Store a year later, a phenomenon had been bor n. Touchscreens were mainstream. Impact | Made touchscreen phones easier to use and made the touchscreen interface popular. More or less buried styluses in smaller devices.
Miss | Motorola ROKR (2005) This collaboration between Apple and Motorola was supposed to be the ultimate music phone. It turned out to be startlingly disappointing in terms of design, especially coming from two companies that were known for sleek gadgetry. It wasn't much fun to use either and was rejected by the market. The silver lining: Apple decided to go it alone in phones and gave the world the iPhone.
The Big Hit iPad (2010) The last ubergadget from Steve Jobs, the iPad built on the platfor m of the iPhone and the iPod touch, bringing the same smooth and intuitive interface to a larger display. Jobs called it the "third screen" which would fit somewhere between notebooks and desktops. Being easy to carry, it made accessing the Internet on the move a much more wholesome experience. Of course, the App Stores' wide variety of apps made it possible for one to do just about everything possible - from video editing to word processing to playing games and films - on it. A number of techies called it a gadget that was impractical and had no real value. And went ahead and bought one. Tablets had finally arrived - even the Indian government thought them the ideal means to popularise computing.
Impact | Made tablets a popular platform for accessing information and entertainment on the move. Perhaps tolled the bell for the demise of netbooks.
Meanwhile, the other gadgets that became chartbusters...
Nintendo Wii (2006) Gaming was supposed to be the job of hardcore gamers clustered in dark rooms around massive computers and consoles. Nintendo yanked it right into the living room with its Wii gaming console where users could control characters by waving their arms, rather than hitting buttons. A new, more accessible era in gaming had arrived - one that Microsoft would take to the next level with its Xbox 360 Kinect.
Amazon Kindle (2007) For all the benefits of digitial devices, most people preferred doing their "serious reading" on paper. Until Amazon upset the applecart with its Kindle e-book. A device that had very few takers initially as the number of e-books available were limited and those that existed, were expensive. However, as their number grew, so did the sales, and today more e-books are downloaded from Amazon than paper ones sold.
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