

We Had No Idea (the first digital camera) - eduardoflores
http://pluggedin.kodak.com/post/?id=687843

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brc
Film business - dead from Digital Cameras - time taken ~7 years from first
affordable high quality cameras. Music Distribution business (cds/vinyls in
shops) - death throes from Digital Music players - time taken ~7 years from
first affordable high quality mp3 players. Newspaper business - first models
of viable media devices (Kindle, iPad) now viable - gone by 2015?

~~~
Robin_Message
Stats: First six months of 2010, 112 million CD albums sold, 42 million
download albums sold, 600 million CD singles sold (~60 million album
equivalent) [1] so it's about 50/50 on digital music. Physical music
distribution is not it it's death throes. Also, the decline is slowing, and
the market is fairly saturated.

The thing that killed film cameras is that digital cameras just work better
and have at least one killer feature -- Instant review. That is a massive
advantage for consumer and professional alike. Once the disadvantages were
moore's lawed away -- quality for professionals and price, size and printing
for consumers -- film could not stand.

There is no killer feature with download music. I can get it faster, but so
what? It might grasp the fashion markets, but not everyone needs _music now_.
It has added no killer feature and it's not even cheaper. And one thing that's
not like all the others -- it's a worse product. Most people have a CD player
in their house and their car. And their computer. And their friends have CD
players †. And they can play their CD's everywhere, and they can rip them and
put them on portable devices, and they can display them in their living rooms.

Newspapers - physicality is nice, but I can well see them disappearing,
because digital news will be more convenient, cheaper and more up-to-date. The
winners will be the digital newspapers that preserve or enhance the paper
reading experience, which might not mean having reporters and so on, but will
mean selecting and presenting information in a way people value (in
particular, mirroring the reader's values. It just occurred to me that the
Daily Mirror in the UK is the best (and most ironically) named newspaper
ever.)

[1] <http://www.prosoundnews.com/blog/30154>

† iPod docks in hifis and cars are getting penetration, but are not standard
yet, and certainly not ubiquitous. Fixing this will be one thing that kills
physical music.

~~~
brc
Point taken that it's too early to lay flowers at the grave of physical music
- but would you invest in a shopping mall music store? I've seen a lot of them
close down.

The killer feature with downloadable music is (virtually) unlimited storage,
and having your entire collection with you in one device. It won't be long
before cars don't have CD players (it's 10 years since they dropped cassette
players, and it was about 5 years while they had both). I would say iPod docks
in cars are already ubitiquous - most car reviews in magazines will mention if
there is one or not, and journalists usually moan if there isn't.

I also disagree with the thought that displaying in living rooms and swapping
with friends is a feature. I put all my old CDs in a box years ago. It's only
music tragics that want everyone to see their collection.

The thing is, the biggest consumers of music are young people. Try and find a
17 year old with a CD player. As this demographic moves through life, CDs will
shrink into niche stores just like print films.

~~~
Prisen
Downloadable music will also die. Spotify, or equivalent streaming services,
have the clear killer feature downloadable music is missing - access to all
music on any machine with an internet connection. Carrying around your data
will seem antiquated really soon.

Edit: For the US readers I'd like to clarify that I don't count any other
existing services as equal to Spotify, but there will surely be copycats soon.
It is the iphone of streaming music applications if you like analogies.

~~~
wizard_2
I'm one of the 9 million new yorkers who take the subway to work every morning
and work in midtown. If I had to rely on a net connection for music, photos,
etc I would be without a great deal of the day. (During transit, at 5pm, in
some office buildings.)

I also don't like the idea of renting, music, property or otherwise.

~~~
NickPollard
How long before Subway trains start getting dedicated wi-fi?

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thumper
I wonder if these guys would have gotten funding in today's corporate world,
showing off that clunky device! It seems like this is a good example of the
kind of leap that management needs to be able to take to see the potential of
research work. We've all been so habituated to expecting "the world of
tomorrow, today" that now researchers have to get a lot closer to
productization (especially with respect to aesthetics) for higher-ups to "get
it".

~~~
sprout
It sounds like they didn't get funding in the corporate world of 1976.

>Although we attempted to address the last question by applying Moore’s law to
our architecture (15 to 20 years to reach the consumer), we had no idea how to
answer these or the many other challenges that were suggested by this
approach. An internal report was written and a patent was granted on this
concept in 1978 (US 4,131,919).

That seems to be as far as Kodak took it until digital cameras really started
to eat their lunch.

~~~
rtyuioiujhygf
Not really, Kodak where at the forefront of large low noise CCDs in the early
90s. They had industrial chips that wiped the floor with a lot of the science
CCD suppliers. The first pro digital cameras where from Kodak, or had a Kodak
CCD inside.

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zeteo
It seems kind of pointless to take a patent on something even /you/ think will
only become big in 15-20 years...

~~~
JacobAldridge
Good rule of thumb for any tech development (including startups) - if you're
working on an idea, someone else is also working on exactly that idea.

Of course, that won't be true in many cases. The patent is there for the times
that it is.

~~~
jrockway
A legal framework for invalidating other people's independent discoveries?
Sounds like a great idea.

~~~
JacobAldridge
"Ay, there's the rub" - _Hamlet_ Act III Scene i

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vl
It's an interesting achievement, but as far as I understand, all technologies
demonstrated in this prototype were already used on satellites by this time.

~~~
wmf
Was that satellite technology classified? IIRC the military also invented
digital audio and public-key crypto but these inventions weren't publicly
known until decades later by which time they had been reinvented by civilians.

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vaksel
if you look at many inventions we use today...they were actually invented
decades before they started getting used by consumers.

