The iMac and the Floppy Drive: A Conspiracy Theory (1998)
osnews.com
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Going from wired to wireless is bigger than depreciation, because wires have physical functions beyond transferring data (keeping earbuds together).
The thinner-Thinner-THINNER mantra sounds very much like applied to cellphones in the pre-smartphone era. Which movie will make fun it in a Zoolander-esque way? When will we snap back and realize usability trumps style in the end.
Infamous 1998 Boston Globe review : “The iMac will only sell to some of the true believers. The iMac doesn’t include a floppy disk drive for doing file backups or sharing of data. It’s an astonishing lapse from Jobs, who should have learned better… the iMac is clean, elegant, floppy-free–and doomed.”
In 1998, people had stacks of floppy disks, and external floppy drives were expensive. That was a painful transition, and this transition has far more benefits. The cable isn't just the dongle, it is the additional ports because all of the electrical engineering is handled by the computer. Last year you couldn't power your computer through the HDMI port, or plug your monitor into the mouse port.