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by Jeffrey
Today, reliable technology is one of the most accessible things on this planet. A quick search shows that an alarming approximated 54% of the earths population owns a smartphone. For contrast, it’s estimated that in the year 2000 that only 28% of the population even owned the most basic cellphone. These days consumer hardware tech innovation has taken a dive as they’ve found what people want, and there’s no reason to reinvent the wheel. Any big new weird thing is a huge financial risk, and probably unnecessary. Instead innovation happens more on a software scale, or behind the scenes with incremental hardware upgrades.
I wanna take y’all back in time to when companies were absolutely frothing at the mouth to be the first to come up with the next big thing, and certainly weren’t afraid to try. Many of these tech products flopped, but still helped lay the foundation for everything that exists today. Cue the hilarious 90's commercials again.
Sega Activator (1993)
HAHAHAHA. This commercial is hilarious. The cartoon whirling sound effect every time the logo spins out of control, the announcers voice and the absolute absurdity of the product. They reallllly tried to sell this one. It’s essentially like trying to play games with a DDR pad (Years later we saw YouTubers do that just for the pure challenge of it.) but instead of physical touch, it used infrared light. There’s no WAY on EARTH this was enjoyed by even a single person.
Sony Glasstron Lite (1998)
This one kind of rules. It looks like a precursor to VR, but it’s more so just a wearable display. It looks SICK, and is surprisingly small. The crappy earbuds were built in with no option to swap them out. I couldn’t find a US commercial, but I enjoyed this video plenty.
Microsoft Spot Watch (2004)
This concept video is pretty cool actually. And obviously, this was a great idea, because well, I own an Apple Watch today, and I know plenty of others that do too. It was just too ahead of its time. But unfortunately it had poor integration and in some ways was outdated compared to the current “smart” device tech market. People also weren’t ready for the $10 monthly (or $59 yearly) subscription model. But this was definitely a step in the right direction for a commonly used device today. Unfortunately for Microsoft, in a way that didn’t benefit them at all.
Motorola N Gage (2003)
Yet another great commercial. I remember the moment that these became available. It was such a cool idea, until you actually understood how it worked. A portable 3d gaming device AND a cell phone?? Awesome. But man it just sucked. In order to change out the game cart you had to remove the battery every time. There was no good reason for that. You were stuck with T9 controls for gaming, the main appeal, the screen was only 2.1”, and my absolute FAVORITE part of the N Gage, is that if you took a call, you had to hold it like this:
Radio Shack CueCat (2000)
Okay. Now while this one is totally and obviously silly, it was indeed another thing way ahead of its time. The CueCat essentially hooked into your PC, was shaped like a cat, and scanned barcodes in catalogs so you could go directly to what you were just looking at. It sounds incredibly dumb the moment you hear about it, and of course SEE it, but it’s the first step towards modern day QR codes.
The Audrey Digital Home Assistant (2001)
While it was a cool idea, and a great first step, Audrey's capabilities were restricted to basic tasks like checking email, displaying news, and providing weather updates. It lacked the versatility and functionality that people wanted from a home assistant device. It was super clunky and had a terrible UI. Furthermore it came out juuuuuust before broadband internet was more accessible. Potentially if they released it a year or so later, it could’ve done much better. Now we have countless devices that achieve the original vision, whether fully intended as a “home assistant” or not.
Motorola PageWriter 2000 (1997)
Marketed as a “2-way pager” probably didn’t help sell this thing. But also, at the time, there wasn’t really another preexisting term to call it either. In reality, it was more like a 1st generation Blackberry (which came out 3 years later) than anything. It had all the features of the PDAs at the time, but with a much smaller form factor. All in all, actually a pretty cool little product, and I’m sure it played a role in bridging the gap to the next generation of mobile communication devices.
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There are traits in all of these that have contributed to the devices that a lot of us use daily, so by no means were they bad ideas through and through. Maybe it was bizarre marketing, or poor timing that lead to these flops. But it just goes to who ya, that even some of the best ideas don’t work right away, and need the time, the tweaks and the approach to get people interested in even using them.