Three minutes of Apple nostalgia
Forgive me if you've already seen this — and nearly a quarter million people already have, according to YouTube — but I just stumbled across this video and thought I'd share it on what's shaping up as a slow day for Apple news.
It's a photographic history of the company set to Fiona Apple's version of "Across the Universe" (from the movie "Pleasantville").
The video's provenance is uncertain; it was posted on BuzzNewsroom by "Christophe" on Dec. 15, 2008 — just before some of us got distracted by the news that Steve Jobs was skipping Macworld.
At one level, it's just a trip down Cupertino's memory lane, from Steve Wozniac's original Apple motherboard (in a hobbyist's wooden case) to the iPhone and the unibody MacBook.
But it's more than that. It's also, in the middle section, a visual reminder of how badly Apple (AAPL) lost its way during Steve Jobs' 1985-1997 exile — not just in the parade of beige boxes designed to look like IBM PCs, but in a series of failed experiments perhaps best forgotten:
- Apple PowerCD (1993)
- Newton (1993)
- QuickTake digital camera (1994)
- Apple Bandai Pippin (1995)
You can almost feel the company come back to life — and into focus — at the video's 1:59 mark, with Jonathan Ive's Bondi-blue iMac.
Let's go to the video, below the fold:
I think some of these images are in non-chronological order. I know for a fact that the Lisa predated the Mac.
Even more fascinating would be to see how hardware and software solutions were first evolved by Apple and then were taken up by everyone else – including two little software packages called Word and Excel….
@Myles.
I think you are wrong. When they fired Steve Apple produced a collection of dreadful machines that were hanging onto the dregs of what was the Mac at the time. It wasn;t until the return of Steve that Apple actually started to get it's act together and start doing things much better.
Getting out of the handheld area was a good call at the time. Apple needed to focus. By developing the iTunes infrastructure when they did release an organizer, the iPhone, they came out with all cylinders firing.
Lost their way? No I think those products helped Apple find their way. Innovation means taking risks, and as we all know some risks fare better than others.
Unfortunately, Apple's unwillingness to enter the handheld market after the Newton, the gaming market after Pippin and to proceed with camera/video product collaborations were Apple's real mistakes.
I'm glad the were able to move to Intel processors after their laptop line started to lag. I guess the PPC was a mistake too. How about the original iBook? What if they had abandoned notebook after that bomb?
Concerning the QuickTake camera, that was a pioneering device and not a mistake. When it came out, digital cameras were very rare; the QuickTake allowed Mac users to be in the vanguard of digital photography. As other manufacturers came to the market, the QuickTake was justifiably killed. In many ways it was like the original LaserWriter printers from Apple – they created the market when few options from other manufacturers were available, and were withdrawn when others came to market with Mac compatible laser printers.