[HN Gopher] Fax on the beach: The audacious, visionary, calamito...
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Fax on the beach: The audacious, visionary, calamitous iPad of the
90s
Author : anarbadalov
Score : 74 points
Date : 2020-02-10 19:05 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.inputmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.inputmag.com)
| csours wrote:
| I wonder if the name is related to Captain EO[0]? Or the Greek
| Goddess of Dawn for whom Captain EO is named?
|
| 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_EO
| Aenoire wrote:
| From Wikipedia, it's based on the Latin for "I go".
| npunt wrote:
| > "We could have had the iPhone 10 years earlier, at least."
|
| The fate of prototype techs is almost always to be remembered
| with these kind of wistful statements about how they could have
| been [market leader] except for [reasons].
|
| These statements betray an ignorance about just how category-
| defining products come into being. Making even a moderately
| successful, let alone category-defining product is _super hard_
| and it 's nowhere near enough to just have an idea, whether
| represented on a napkin, or in a demo video, or even in a
| tangible prototype. Ideas are cheap, even ideas that are rather
| prescient.
|
| Making successful products also requires TIMING, LEVERAGE, and
| EXECUTION.
|
| TIMING - build something too early and you waste capital fighting
| uphill against a market not ready for the idea. Product-market
| fit is not always possible for any given idea at the current
| moment in time. For tech, things like battery density, speed,
| screen tech, internet bandwidth, cost etc are critical to time
| correctly.
|
| Example: Youtube and Netflix appropriately timed the cost of
| storage and internet bandwidth so they were ready to go when
| streaming was just becoming cost-effective, versus earlier
| efforts like Broadcast.com. It wasn't a leap to conclude video
| streaming was a good idea even in the 80s or 90s, but it needed
| to be timed.
|
| Additionally, timing things _culturally_ matters a ton. People
| need to be ready for an idea, to incorporate a new product into
| their life. The window of what 's cool or acceptable is a moving
| target, what's uncool now may be cool in 5 years. It's often
| other interim products that shift this window.
|
| Example: Google's launch of consumer-focused Google Glass and the
| immediate blowback that resulted.
|
| Finally, pioneers get arrows in their backs. You reveal your
| grand ideas too early and you've just paid for a ton of concept
| development R&D that others can just pick off for free.
|
| LEVERAGE - Ideas require business leverage to succeed in market.
| Things like brand leverage where you're already trusted in the
| market and have a history of delivering quality, the ability to
| scale manufacturing to meet demand, business relationships and
| scale to get access to special components or lower component
| costs, a well-oiled organization with deep talent bench, etc.
|
| Example: The iPhone would not have been what it is without the
| iPod. Apple leveraged its talent, its history of manufacturing
| iPods, its suppliers, and its huge consumer appeal. It also used
| that to negotiate with AT&T to have complete control of the UX
| and to get unlimited data plans.
|
| EXECUTION - Lots of high-concept ideas are lousy at the exact
| details and execution of the idea. Cool, you can send a fax from
| the beach, but under what conditions? Is fax even the right
| modality? Is the UX cumbersome, or require a laborious setup
| process? Its often the little things that separate market
| defining products from abject failures, even when they check the
| same boxes.
|
| Example: Galaxy Fold is great high concept product that doesn't
| execute on its promise because its too fragile and creates a
| screen crease.
|
| It's also possible to do a great job on details, but within the
| wrong constraints. You can be efficient (doing things right) but
| still not be effective (doing the right things). Specifically in
| the case of this 'iPad of the 90s', they didn't have the enabling
| technologies to make a great experience - things like fast
| refresh rates, multi-touch, beautiful screen, etc. They probably
| did a fantastic job with the pen, but the pen was the wrong
| constraint.
|
| Basically the creators are severely downplaying the timing,
| leverage, and execution required to make products successful, and
| seem to think this cool but barely-launched concept could have
| been the most successful product on earth (iPhone). I doubt the
| creator would have been able to produce anything more than a
| PalmPilot or Treo, both of which were OK products for their time,
| but ultimately are just mostly forgotten preludes to the product
| that DID define the category.
| webwielder2 wrote:
| Wouldn't the "iPad of the 90s" be, you know, the Newton
| MessagePad by Apple?
| Ididntdothis wrote:
| There were quite a few devices in the same category. None of
| them really succeeded but I think a lot was learned from them
| which then could be used from the 2000s in when things started
| to take off.
| Steltek wrote:
| Palm Pilot debuted in 1996?
| ghaff wrote:
| Cellular data--or at least widespread WiFi--was pretty much a
| prerequisite for this class of device. That's one reason that
| the Palm Pilot was always something of a niche device. The
| need to constantly sync it made it a lot less useful than it
| would otherwise have been.
|
| (I'd argue that background syncing over WiFi or cellular
| networks is also a reason why Podcasting 2.0 is a lot bigger
| than Podcasting 1.0 was.)
| chadlavi wrote:
| Eat up, Martha
| rodw wrote:
| Was the Newton network capable?
| phjesusthatguy3 wrote:
| My MessagePad 2100 could do AppleTalk over it's serial port
| and wired Ethernet with a card. There was also a pre-wifi
| DigitalOcean device[0] that could do wireless AppleTalk.
|
| [0]https://web.archive.org/web/19970124002055/http://digitalo
| ce...
| paxswill wrote:
| There was IrDA (infrared based communication) that could be
| used for serial connections to other Newtons, computers
| printers and cell phones. It was slow though, so the better
| step up was an actual serial connection to either a modem or
| a cell phone (acting as a modem).
|
| Later versions of the OS (2.1 for sure, and I think 2.0 could
| run a few specific Ethernet cards) had Ethernet (10Base-T,
| and technically 10Base2 I think) and Wifi (802.11b only)
| drivers written for them.
| blihp wrote:
| Not out of the box and probably not for the first couple
| years at least and I don't think wireless (i.e. cellular...
| there was no wifi back then) ever. There was a serial modem
| dongle but that still required a land line.
|
| The closest thing we had to wireless networking was infrared
| serial to either other devices or a computer. It generally
| didn't work well.
| jjkaczor wrote:
| Well... No wifi... I do recall using my 120 with a data
| cable, connected to my Motorola Flip and that as a modem to
| send/receive email.
|
| It was a great demonstration in a coffee shop - although, you
| would be able to watch the battery drain in real-time.
| zippergz wrote:
| The later version of this was using IrDA on my Nokia phone
| to connect my Palm Pilot to the Internet. SO SLOW, but
| always fun to show off to people.
| jjkaczor wrote:
| Ah yes, there was also a PCMCIA/"pc card" in that mix too.
| jdswain wrote:
| And the iPad of the 80's would be the Apple //c as featured in
| the movie 2010. It was seen being used on a beach, complete
| with LCD screen, and this was 1984.
|
| There's a couple of issues though, the //c did not run off
| battery power, so you'd need a long cord, and the LCD was
| terrible, I don't think you'd be able to read it in direct
| sunlight. But if you have a long phone cable to go with the
| power cord, maybe you could have sent a fax? Or at least a
| telex.
| ghaff wrote:
| You had a few early laptops like the DG/One [1] that could
| run off of battery by 1984. But there was really no way to
| communicate without plugging into a phone line. (You could
| maybe have used a radio modem in principle but you mostly had
| to connect to landline phone service to communicate.)
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_General-One
| DonHopkins wrote:
| In the early 90's, I remember seeing a dude typing away
| furiously on an Apple //c at a coffeeshop on Haight Street in
| San Francisco. I did a double take when I realized he didn't
| have a screen or a plug. It turns out he was a stenographer,
| just practicing his typing.
| reaperducer wrote:
| I've seen pictures on the intarwebs of people using full
| Commodore PETs at coffee shops. I think in Toronto.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| My favorite Commodore PET appearance in a music video is
| Pete Shelley's 1981 Homosapien:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HwmO_GZfzI
|
| It's the professional version with the Big Boy keyboard,
| and it's running some silly BASIC program printing out
| text in a loop.
| mceachen wrote:
| There was an all-in-one Commodore 64 that would have been
| coffee-shop-friendly. It was "luggable" (a stone away
| from being "portable").
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_SX-64
| brokenmachine wrote:
| I had one of those. It was fun, but "luggable" makes it
| sound more romantic than it was to carry around. It
| weighed 10.5kg.
|
| 10.5kg becomes heavy very quickly, especially because of
| its awkward shape.
| s1mon wrote:
| I'm surprised that this article doesn't mention General Magic for
| context. It's really crazy how much of this was invented and
| reinvented but the infrastructure and performance just wasn't
| there during the 90's in a way to support mass adoption. It was
| close enough to build something, but all of those somethings
| failed until WiFi, cell technology and Moore's law supported
| small enough gadgets. If you haven't watched it yet, I highly
| recommend the documentary on General Magic.
| https://www.generalmagicthemovie.com/
| DonHopkins wrote:
| I posted earlier about the Momenta Pen Computer, which debuted in
| 1991, when "pen computing" was all the rage.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21492195
|
| >In 1991 when "pen computing" was all the rage, a start-up
| company called "Momenta" came out with a "pentop" MS-DOS based
| pen computer with a pie-menu-like "command compass", whose user
| interface was done in Smalltalk.
|
| >Remember that this was in 1991, the same year Go Corporation
| finally released PenPoint, and a year before the 1992 founding of
| Palm Computing (which took over the Pen market for many years)
| and the release of Microsoft Windows 3.1 in 1992 (the first
| version of Windows that wasn't intolerably irritating), and the
| release of Microsoft Windows for Pen Computing in 1992 (which was
| a big flop). So there was a huge amount of excitement around pen
| computing.
|
| [...and more about how their founder confused Smalltalk with
| Lisp, plus links to photos, reference manual excerpts, and more
| info about the Momenta pen computer...]
| smoyer wrote:
| I had (and used) an Amstrad PenPad for a number of years (until
| I replaced it with a Sharp Zaurus 5000D which ran Qt on Linux).
| The down-side to both was a lack of connectivity!
| cobbzilla wrote:
| The Zaurus could do wifi with a Compact Flash wifi card, it
| was pretty cool. I miss my Zaurus, it was a fun little Linux
| box.
| newnewpdro wrote:
| the battery life was dismal though
| organsnyder wrote:
| Somewhat newer, but I think the Nokia N-series was similar.
| My N810 could do wifi and ran a Linux variant (also QT,
| IIRC). It was a fun little device.
| Taniwha wrote:
| I was working for a chip startup in the early 90s - we moved into
| office space in Sunnyvale that had recently been vacated by the
| GO corp (I think) .... above my desk were dozens of pencils
| embedded in the ceiling tiles ... some poor soul sitting there as
| the company company was dying has sat there throwing them up
| until they stuck ... hopefully he or she retired with both eyes
| .... I removed them before they came down on their own
| DonHopkins wrote:
| I love the skeuomorphic BVVVVVVV sounds it makes when you tap the
| screen with the pen to send a fax.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| My takeaway here is that this just further proves the
| excruciating reality, that bringing new innovative technology to
| the market is inextricably incentivized to involve litigation,
| politics, infighting, backstabbing etc... in other words normal
| business practices in a highly competitive market. Competition
| for dollars just fundamentally makes this a reality.
|
| I certainly wouldn't offer that there is any better
| system/process for this, but it remains disheartening for
| idealistic (some could say naiive) technologists that this is the
| case.
|
| I think it's worth keeping that in mind when thinking through how
| to create the "next big thing", or even some next small things.
| csours wrote:
| I wonder how much it of the problem was the Innovator's Dilemma
| and how much was the marketplace and technical infrastructure
| not being ready.
|
| Dick Tracy had a smartwatch, but it took a while to actually
| bring it to market.
|
| --- Edit: after reading to the end of the article, there were
| further difficulties: the units cost over $6,000 (adjusted to
| 2019 dollars), also there were supply chain problems from their
| competition (not sure how seriously to take this one).
| jandrese wrote:
| Reading the article my impression was that it was a device
| well ahead of its time.
|
| The CPU was some oddball thing much faster than its
| contemporaries that no doubt cost and arm and a leg. The
| battery technology wasn't ready so they had to compromise on
| life. The cellular modem technology was first gen: slow,
| expensive, unreliable, and without an Internet to connect to.
| The demo had them sending a fax!
|
| Plus they had to build the OS from scratch with an entirely
| new paradigm (no keyboard!). And it had the unfortunate first
| gen pen-interface mistake of focusing heavily on handwriting
| recognition tech that never worked properly on that
| generation of hardware. Even today its pretty iffy, and
| virtual keyboards are the preferred solution. The only
| company that kind of got away with it was Palm, and only
| because they invented a new alphabet that would be easier for
| the computer to recognize.
|
| It also goes to show just how much of design is not only
| coming up with the ideas, but realizing when the technology
| has advanced to the point where they can be practically
| implemented.
| pnathan wrote:
| I am persuaded that invention effectiveness in the market is
| almost entirely a function of business acumen, and almost
| completely divorced from the technical capability. Although a
| total lemon will fail.
| retonom wrote:
| I'd say you brought your takeaway along already, i.e. your
| conviction on how the world operates - and you "took it away"
| again since all that we can "discover" is usually a subset of
| what we believe already.
| xenospn wrote:
| Great read but oh man is the typography awful on that site.
| bitwize wrote:
| I love the typography. It's so 90s, I expect to see it on a
| billboard with Crash Override and Acid Burn rollerblading by in
| front.
| reillyse wrote:
| The "more like this" headlines at the bottom are particularly
| egregious.
| camillovisini wrote:
| I got 10 ads, and they were all the same...
| dorkandstormy wrote:
| Yeah, no frequency capping. I got all Apple Card ads, which
| tarnishes Apple Card brand value. This feels like a dollar
| store theoutline.com. Brutalism doesn't work for long-form
| content, imho.
| rootbear wrote:
| I saw a presentation about Go and PenPoint in the early 90s,
| probably at a Usenix conference, and I was very impressed. I was
| sorry it never went anywhere.
|
| My other PenPoint story comes from a business trip I took to
| Japan in 1994. One weekend, I went to a gay bar in Tokyo (GB, in
| Shinjuku) and met an American who was working for Go and was in
| Japan to work on Asian language input (which was an interesting
| problem). I mentioned that I had a friend who was working on
| Hobbit software and it turned out my friend and this guy had
| exchanged email the week before! Two American gay nerds meet in a
| bar in Tokyo and find they know another gay nerd in common.
| Crazy.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Love your user name. So your prompt is a pound sign? ;)
| rootbear wrote:
| Yes, frequently it is. We were at UMCP at the same time, by
| the way.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| OMG! Do you know the dude in the Terrapin Tacos interview
| who said he is there five or six times a day, and sits up
| all night thinking about how good the food is? They pick
| the rocks out of your beans.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xz8xy61nBjY
| rootbear wrote:
| That's hilarious. They had the best beef and bean
| burritos...
| mlrtime wrote:
| What is the 2020 version of "fax on the beach"?
| x__x wrote:
| > What is the 2020 version of "fax on the beach"?
|
| Have you ever performed surgery on the beach?
|
| Remote surgery. A doctor is vacationing in The Bahamas and gets
| an emergency message that a patient needs to go under surgery
| or will die. The doctor pulls out a briefcase and opens it up,
| where there is a screen and interactive controls where he can
| remotely perform a life saving surgery
| thedance wrote:
| Not sure but there have been lots of idiotic use cases in tech
| demos of recent years. Consider the demos of the impossibly
| stupid Microsoft Surface Table, which you must use to order
| cocktails at a bar, or browse photographs in a really
| inconvenient way.
|
| That was 2008. More recently, a rational and critical look at
| 99.9% of proposed use cases for blockchain are things that
| nobody wants.
|
| Another thing that literally nobody wants but people keep
| trying to market: folding displays.
| thedance wrote:
| Actually there's whole business models that are based on
| nonsense. Like the idea that people will pay someone to drive
| over to Subway and bring back a terrible $3 sandwich, and
| that this scheme will somehow be systemically profitable.
| ghaff wrote:
| Maybe not a $3 Subway sandwich but the delivery of pizza in
| particular was pretty widespread before the current VC cash
| bonfires so I'm not sure it has to be "nonsense."
|
| I expect a lot of people 20 years or so ago would think
| that the idea you could get many, many types of things
| delivered to your door in a day or two for a reasonable
| price pretty out there.
| thedance wrote:
| The delivery aspect of the pizza business does not need
| to be profitable as a stand-alone endeavor, whereas the
| delivery part of Uber Eats does. And it's the driving
| part that doesn't make any sense. Obviously people have
| been delivering food in dense and compact cities like New
| York for decades.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Have you ever fixed dinner on your iPad? You will.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5aEVGkkgVo
| thedance wrote:
| The future is here, and it's not an iPhone, it's a big-ass
| table.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZrr7AZ9nCY
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