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https://m.slashdot.org/story/21026

“No wireless. Less space than the Nomad. Lame”

Palm CEO on the iPhone

“ We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone, PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”

People seem to forget that it took two years to sell the first 1 million iPods and Apple only sold 10 million iPhones the first year - 1% of the total market.




Same with the Apple Watch. Sales were really rough for the first generation and their return rates were mocked widely, including by me.

Now, practically everyone is wearing an Apple Watch, including me.


a $300 iPhone accessory is not a $4,000 strap-on face computer. That you'd even suggest that is a joke and you should be embarrassed.


> Palm CEO on the iPhone

This quote pre-dates the iPhone by a couple of months. So it doesn't remotely qualify as a "failed product" comment. It's just a bad prediction.

(And it's not that bad: the iPhone launched with 2G and without an app market or text-editing beyond delete-and-retype, for example)


Also the more blatant fact that OF COURSE the CEO of Palm is going to be bearish on the damn iPhone, otherwise they would have made the damn iPhone at some point!

How often does a direct competitor CEO outright say that they expect a new competitor product to not be underwhelming?

99% of the time a CEO says anything future looking that isn't regulated by the SEC, they are just leaning on suvivors bias to look good retroactively.


Bill Gates about the iTunes Music Store

https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/07/09/bill-gates-said-s...

> Steve Jobs['] ability to focus in on a few things that count, get people who get user interface right and market things as revolutionary are amazing things," Gates wrote. "This time somehow he has applied his talents in getting a better licensing deal than anyone else has gotten for music."


They were just so expensive compared to everything else.

And so locked down - did the iPod even have Windows support in the beginning? I can't remember.


You first had fo use MusicMatch and have a FireWire port on your Mac. Apple released the USB version and iPod support two years later.


You just have to keep rubbing it in!

Poor CmdTaco, after all these years, still can't get a break.


I can go even further back

John C. Dvorak in 1984…

https://www.liquisearch.com/john_c_dvorak/technological_pred...

> "The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a 'mouse.' There is no evidence that people want to use these things."


Dvorak also got pretty irate at the 'idle' task on Windows consuming so much CPU, as reported by Task Manager. Ah, simpler days.




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