Fax on the beach: The audacious, visionary, calamitous iPad of the 90s

Re:Fax on the beach: The audacious, visionary, calamitous iP... by AndrewKemendo on Monday February 10, 2020 @02:34PM (#22292393)

My takeaway here is that this just further proves the excruciating reality, that bringing new innovative technology to the market is inextricably incentivized to involve litigation, politics, infighting, backstabbing etc... in other words normal business practices in a highly competitive market. Competition for dollars just fundamentally makes this a reality.

I certainly wouldn't offer that there is any better system/process for this, but it remains disheartening for idealistic (some could say naiive) technologists that this is the case.

I think it's worth keeping that in mind when thinking through how to create the "next big thing", or even some next small things.

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Re:Fax on the beach: The audacious, visionary, calamitous iP... by csours on Monday February 10, 2020 @02:45PM (#22292496)

I wonder how much it of the problem was the Innovator's Dilemma and how much was the marketplace and technical infrastructure not being ready.

Dick Tracy had a smartwatch, but it took a while to actually bring it to market.

--- Edit: after reading to the end of the article, there were further difficulties: the units cost over $6,000 (adjusted to 2019 dollars), also there were supply chain problems from their competition (not sure how seriously to take this one).

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Re:Fax on the beach: The audacious, visionary, calamitous iP... by jandrese on Monday February 10, 2020 @04:25PM (#22293544)

Reading the article my impression was that it was a device well ahead of its time.

The CPU was some oddball thing much faster than its contemporaries that no doubt cost and arm and a leg. The battery technology wasn't ready so they had to compromise on life. The cellular modem technology was first gen: slow, expensive, unreliable, and without an Internet to connect to. The demo had them sending a fax!

Plus they had to build the OS from scratch with an entirely new paradigm (no keyboard!). And it had the unfortunate first gen pen-interface mistake of focusing heavily on handwriting recognition tech that never worked properly on that generation of hardware. Even today its pretty iffy, and virtual keyboards are the preferred solution. The only company that kind of got away with it was Palm, and only because they invented a new alphabet that would be easier for the computer to recognize.

It also goes to show just how much of design is not only coming up with the ideas, but realizing when the technology has advanced to the point where they can be practically implemented.

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Re:Fax on the beach: The audacious, visionary, calamitous iP... by brunoTbear on Tuesday February 11, 2020 @01:29AM (#22296524)

I legitimately miss Graffiti as an input. I was so fast on that.

I also miss my blackberry keyboard. iOS has never done it for me the same way.

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Re:Fax on the beach: The audacious, visionary, calamitous iP... by Multicomp on Tuesday February 11, 2020 @10:09PM (#22305374)

A software solution would be that graffiti Android keyboard, a hardware solution would be the FXTech pro 1, which is among the first landscape Android slider smartphones to come out in years.

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Re:Fax on the beach: The audacious, visionary, calamitous iP... by npunt on Monday February 10, 2020 @08:32PM (#22295195)

That's not my takeaway - I think they just critically mistimed the idea and didn't have much business sense to realize it. Even if their experience was bs-free and they were extremely well capitalized, they wouldn't have succeeded because the tech wasn't anywhere near ready.

90s tech (batteries, cpus, screens, etc) could only reasonably produce single function hand-held devices like phones and CDs. Even late 90s tech like in Palm Pilots could only make pretty crummy experiences that had limited mass market appeal.

Longer take on it: https://nickpunt.com/blog/category-defining-products/

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Re:Fax on the beach: The audacious, visionary, calamitous iP... by IggleSniggle on Monday February 10, 2020 @09:53PM (#22295584)

The Palm Pilot was pretty brilliant. It was so cheap! And as a result I imagine it got a lot of people used to the idea of being able to do "mobile computing", and what kind of activities would work well in the form factor.

I can still remember the sound of my m100s clicks.

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Re:Fax on the beach: The audacious, visionary, calamitous iP... by beamatronic on Monday February 10, 2020 @11:30PM (#22296071)

I had a Handspring Visor. They were pretty trendy in 1999-2000. My friend had the Ricochet cellular modem and we were jealous he could get email on it. But there were apps similar to Yelp with databases of restaurant reviews. It would sync in the cradle, attached to your PC, to get the latest data over the Internet. Imagine an iPod touch with no radios.

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Re:Fax on the beach: The audacious, visionary, calamitous iP... by npunt on Tuesday February 11, 2020 @05:13PM (#22303510)

Yeah these devices did check some boxes for various features and capabilities, and as a late 90s tech geek I wanted one badly because they were clearly 'the future', but the fit & finish in the UX just wasn't there for breakout success. That was largely a function of the state of hardware.

I also had a pseudo-iPhone experience with my Treo in 2005-07, with an add-on bluetooth GPS and various apps for MP3s etc. It did the job in a way, but it was clunky, and the web experience was subpar to say the least. But it was a sign of things to come.

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Re:Fax on the beach: The audacious, visionary, calamitous iP... by ghaff on Tuesday February 11, 2020 @07:54AM (#22298055)

Trendy is a good word for it. I won mine at some trade show raffle and I know lots of tech folks who all wanted one during a certain period. However I also remember that, among other things, the cradle sync requirement made them not really all that terribly useful. Mine became drawer-ware after a while and I don't think that was all that unusual.

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Re:Fax on the beach: The audacious, visionary, calamitous iP... by pnathan on Monday February 10, 2020 @03:28PM (#22292916)

I am persuaded that invention effectiveness in the market is almost entirely a function of business acumen, and almost completely divorced from the technical capability. Although a total lemon will fail.

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Re:Fax on the beach: The audacious, visionary, calamitous iP... by retonom on Monday February 10, 2020 @03:55PM (#22293192)

I'd say you brought your takeaway along already, i.e. your conviction on how the world operates - and you "took it away" again since all that we can "discover" is usually a subset of what we believe already.

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