11.1. Why failures?

By common standards, a failure is a negative experience that should be avoided by all means. It leaves bad impressions, psychological traces and is hard to recover from. But, how do we learn, if not from failures? A child’s ability to learn is fully based on failures; why not take stock of our biological nature to improve all that we do and forever?

But, wait a minute, says our consciousness (which is hard). We deserve some rest after our successes, which we acquired at a high cost.

11.2. Failure dissolves in time

There is intrinsic heaviness in being successful. You may avoid failure for a long time, but you will become heavy. This drives innovation out of industry.

The lightness of being a beginner again makes you less sure about everything but makes you free to pursue creativity. Get something and understand it thoroughly. This brings innovation in.

With intensity, time loses its linearity. Time is not linear. What counts is what happens tomorrow. Think long-term.

11.3. A basket of historical failures

Below is a quick recap of a collection of memorable fiascos and aborted projects that went, for the most part, into oblivion. Going past revisiting them is instructing, more: an obligation, should we endeavor to trace the attitude a posteriori taken with respect to the corresponding products. The following historical excerpts are from Wikipedia.

1983: The Apple Lisa

The Lisa was an attempt to follow the success Apple had with the Apple II. It failed, and the Lisa remains one of the most notorious examples of Apple hubris. Granted, it was the first personal computer to have a Graphical User Interface (GUI) and a mouse, but Apple strayed significantly from its overriding ethos of making affordable personal computers when it released this business-oriented computer. When it debuted in 1983, Lisa (which was either named after Steve Jobs’ first daughter or stood for “Local Integrated Software Architecture”) cost a whopping $9,995 – or $20,807.06 in today’s dollars. Needless to say, the Lisa did not sell very well. Businesses opted for less-expensive IBM PCs, which were already dominating business desktop computing. The Lisa was finally canned in August 1986, by which time Apple’s more affordable Macintosh had already become a bona-fide hit.

1993: The Messagepad (or The Newton)

Arguably, the most famous Apple flop of all, the Newton (which was actually the name of the OS and not the device) started out as a top-secret project with a lofty goal: to reinvent personal computing. During its development, the Newton took on many forms, such as the tablet-like “Cadillac” prototype, before its eventual release in 1993 as a smaller and considerably less revolutionary PDA (Personal Digital Assistant). Although the Newton was available for 6 years (longer than most other Apple flops), it was a prime example of an idea that was simply ahead of its time, and sales never lived up to Apple’s expectations. When Steve Jobs resumed his stewardship of Apple in 1997, one of the first things he did was to axe the subsidiary Newton Systems Group. By the following February, the Newton was dead.

1993: The Macintosh TV

Long before the Apple TV and iTunes were a glimmer in Steve Jobs’ eye, there was Macintosh TV. Clad in all black, the Macintosh TV was the unholy fusion of a 14-inch, cable-ready Sony Trinitron television and an Apple Performa 520. Introduced in 1993, the Macintosh TV was discontinued the following year. Its major failing: it was incapable of showing television feeds in a desktop window. In the end, only 10,000 units were ever produced. Apple continued to experiment with small form factor PCs with the subsequent G4 Cube and eventually saw some success with its all-in-one iMac design in 1998.

1994: The Apple Quicktake

In 1992, Apple Computer started marketing plans for a digital camera called QuickTake, codenamed Venus. The QuickTake 100 was released in 1994 as an easy-to-use digital camera that connected to any Macintosh computer by way of an Apple serial cable. The camera was capable of storing eight photos at 640 × 480 resolution, 32 photos at 320 × 240 resolution or a mixture of both sizes. All photos were at 24-bit color.

It was one of the first digital cameras released targeted to consumers.

The QuickTake 150 kit included a separate close-up lens that allowed focusing at approximately 30 cm. Apple offered a factory upgrade to the QuickTake 100 changing the name to the QuickTake 100 Plus, which included all the functionality of the QuickTake 150.

Apple released a connection kit for Microsoft Windows with the QuickTake 150 in 1995. The last QuickTake model was the Fujifilm-built QuickTake 200, released in 1996. The 200 added focus and aperture controls, as well as the ability to store images on removable SmartMedia flashRAM cards.

The various QuickTake models did not sell very well, as other companies such as Kodak, Fujifilm, Canon and Nikon entered the digital market with brands that consumers associated with photography. They were discontinued in 1997 shortly after Steve Jobs returned to Apple. In an attempt to streamline Apple’s operations, Jobs discontinued many non-computer products, including the Newton line of products, the LaserWriter printer line and the QuickTake cameras.

The Apple QuickTake camera has since become a collector’s item for Apple enthusiasts.

1996: The Apple Pippin

Very few people seem to remember that Apple made an attempt to penetrate the video game market with the Pippin in 1996 – and failed miserably. As a multimedia platform marketed by Apple and toy-maker Bandai, the Pippin was an attempt to create an inexpensive machine that could play games and serve as a network computer. The device tanked for myriad reasons: lack of software, misbranding and the fact that the market was already dominated by systems such as the Nintendo 64, Sega and the Sony PlayStation.

2000: The G4 Cube

Still a highly sought-after collectors’ item, the Jonathan Ive-designed Cube never quite caught on with the people it was supposed to entice: designers and web professionals. The 8×8×8-inches Cube was supposed to fill the gap between the iMac G3 and the Power Mac G4 but was lambasted by critics for its lack of a monitor and high price tag. This led to slow sales, which never really picked up.

Eventually, the Cube faded into obscurity – but only after Ive won several international awards for its design.

The result: everything has a meaning, be it outside or inside. Meaning is in everything. No wonder the first Macintosh series had the signatures of each member of the team engraved within the cover.

Table 11.1 recaps the four genes found in scanning a number of Apple’s major historical failures.