5 Jul
2012
5 Jul
'12
11:02 a.m.
On 07/05/2012 04:22 AM, Mark Benson wrote:
The handwriting recognition was... inadequate (the
cost of being a
pioneering technology), they never sold in much volume (they were
expensive and didn't have many applications), they were too heavy (a
limitation of the technology available) and the screen was hard to
read in some light or the backlight drained the battery (another tech
limitation). The idea was sound, the execution not so much. It was a
common problem at Apple back then.
As a technology it was a good first stab, as a product it tanked.
Whoa buddy, not so fast.
If by "tanked" you mean "failed to be purchased by everyone who had
heard of a computer", sure. ;) Damn near every technical person in my
company at the time had one. (that was a bunch) They were VERY popular
in all the tech haunts in my geographic area at the time (Washington DC
area). From where I sat, everyone seemed to have one. Granted that was
the tech crowd, but that's a lot of people.
It certainly tanked from the perspective of Apple trying to make it a
household thing for every nontechnical person to own (like the iPad is
now) and while it didn't meet Apples (unrealistic) expectations in that
area, but it's not like they didn't sell a shitload of them. I've never
been able to find sales figures for them, but I STILL, as recently as a
couple of months ago, see them popping up in the surplus market. It
takes a lot of sales volume for the surplus market to still be seeing
them almost fifteen years after their discontinuance.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA