Comment by pinaceae | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pinaceae | Hacker News Reader

i am glad to be old enough to remember the time before the iphone. seems like a stupid thing to say, right? but go to any tech forum and it seems like all of it is forgotten already, 2007 is kinda blurry and Apple producing smartphones completely normal.

when the rumours started swirling about apple launching a phone people could not believe it. like at all. apple, the ipod guys, building a phone?! no way, what a joke. you had the photoshops of ipods with a dial, etc. analysts explaining why this was completely wrong, impossible and apple was doomed.

same at the launch of the iPad. same at the launch of the iPod (less space than a nomad, no wifi, lame). what the fuck is a nomad one might say today.

those great photoshops of steve holding a giant iphone to his ear, hilarious. an iPad, buhaha, bunch of retards at apple. but now the galaxy note makes perfect sense. to exactly the same neckbeards who laughed at apple's idiocy before.

apple is indeed the most frustrating company. it somehow has defied gravity in the second jobs era and proven that large swaths of the tech world couldn't define taste and style if their life depended on it.

and perfection, like the iphone launch, is a matter of style and taste.

I remember the days of having to lurk in http://www.howardforums.com/forum.php to figure out which shitty phone I had to buy.

It's insane to think of the phone I had prior to getting an iPhone; it was either a Motorola Razr or a Samsung S-300.

Let's not get too patriotic there,

Apple introduced flops as well, see apple TV

I wouldn't call it a flop, Apple TV, Roku et, al. are all pretty decent and doing well enough for then selves,

I have, and do, all over the place.

I don't know how you can consider the Apple TV a flop. The first generation one was built of OS X instead of iOS for reasons that this article makes very obvious but it hammered out a clear path for the future Apple TV. Much like the MacBook Air, it's really only a "flop" if you're talking about the first generation product and not the establishing of a product line.

Neither took the world by storm, but they both launched a product category that was ill-defined at the time and Apple sells millions of both. There were internet connected set top boxes and ultraportables before the Apple TV and the MacBook Air, but there were only Smart TVs, Rokus, Google TVs, and Ultrabooks after.

Maybe it's just me but establishing a successful and profitable product line that exists to this day hardly qualifies as a flop. Just a shaky first generation. Which, keep in mind, also applies to the iPod.

IMO, the iPod can hardly be considered a flop. The iPod HiFi, THAT was a flop.

The iPod isn't a flop. People I know who got one (including the nontechnical) used it a ton, and it was awesome.

The iPhone isn't a flop. Same story, everyone I know who got it loved it.

My parents got an Apple TV, after enjoying their iPods and iPhones. As far as I know they haven't used it since the first week, and after seeing them try, I don't blame them. The problems that the Apple TV is trying to address are real, but IME it's not there yet.

On the other hand my father has been consistently using his Apple TV non-stop since last christmas. I didn't even have to instruct him on how to use it aside from a 5 minute intro course.

I've heard similar rave reviews from 3 people over 60 about how great the Apple TV is. None of which I would position as tech-savvy.

> Apple introduced flops as well, see apple TV

By their standards perhaps, but I think some of us would like a "flop" as successful as the Apple TV!

http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/28/4374480/apple-tv-sales-13-...

there are examples of apple flops, but the apple tv is actually not one of them. we're now adding them in conference rooms as it kills the fucking projector cable mess once and for all. printers are airplay enabled, work great. will there be projectors with airplay soon?

as for real flops - very often it's services. remember ping? does anyone really care about newsstand, passbook?

they had a pretty good run hardware wise though. the cube might be a candidate. some nano iterations. but else?

Apple TV, from what I gather, was mostly a side-project for Steve Jobs. Something to play with while the focus was on iPhones and, later, iPads. Especially from that perspective it's actually a huge success, and a good way for Apple to dip its toes in an area that many expect is their next Big Thing.

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