“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.
Now, practically everyone is wearing an Apple Watch, including me.
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)
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.
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."
And so locked down - did the iPod even have Windows support in the beginning? I can't remember.
Poor CmdTaco, after all these years, still can't get a break.
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."