Steve Jobs personality reflects Apple in itself; he is the key person behind the persona created by Apple and its innovations. He created a whole new era with the introduction of iPhones and iPad, which are a rave in the society today. He is even responsible to give entertainment a whole new platform with Apple’s iPod, but the question is, did he always get it right from the beginning of his career. The answer is no, he had gone through his share of downfall and flops before arriving to the level of success that we all witness now.
His success has been cherished by the whole world with a loud applause and it is known to all. However his failures got wrapped up under his success stories, let’s go through the products that taught Steve tough lessons of business and failed to achieve its targeted hype.
1. Apple III
In the year 1981, Apple released its next version to Apple II and named it as Apple III with an intention to revive the success of Apple II, however things did not seem to turn out as expected. Apple III ran twice as fast as the Apple II and has twice as much memory – 128k of RAM. It is also the first Apple computer to have a built-in floppy drive, a Shugart 143k 5.25-inch floppy drive. The Apple III has 4 internal expansion slots that are compatible with Apple II cards, and also has Apple II Plus emulation built-in. The whole process was build under the supervision of Steve Jobs. It was available at an introductory price of $7,800.
2. Lisa
In the year 1983 Steve designed Apple Lisa, first commercial computer with a GUI, or Graphical User Interface, however it could not impact the market as predicted. Due to its high price and little availability of software applications this product failed to click.
3. Next Computers
Next computers were Steve’s nurtured child which took off in the year 1989. After his showdown with then Apple CEO and his resignation “Next Computers” was founded in the year 1985. NeXT introduced the first NeXT Computer in 1988, the sales of the NeXT computers was relatively limited, with estimates of about 50,000 units shipped in total. However ultimately Apple purchased NeXT on December 20, 1996 for $429 million and 1.5 million shares of Apple stock which marked Steve’s re entry to the company.
4. Puck mouse
Apple’s puck mouse was released in the year 1998 with high hopes, but it lined up as another failure into Steve’s kitty. This was one big project for Steve after his much hype return to Apple. Although initially Puck mouse got overwhelmed response it lost its charm in a very short span of time and could not yield it big in the giant tech world.
5. The cube
The cube was offered at a price of introductory price of $1799 in year 2000. The Power Mac G4 Cube was a small form factor Macintosh personal computer from Apple by using the innovation from Next computers but its high price resisted its technology to boom. The diminutive 8″ x 8″ x 8″ cube, suspended in a 10″ tall Acrylic (PMMA) enclosure, housed a PowerPC G4 processor running at 450 or 500 megahertz, and had an unconventional vertical slot-loading DVD-ROM or CD-RW drive.
6. iTunes Phone
iTunes phone emerged in the market in the year 2005. It had the capacity to hold only 100 songs, above that the transferring process was also heavily time consuming; downloading was a big fuss in the device.
7. Apple TV
In the year 2007, Apple set its footprints and it was the result of Steve hunger for new innovation and creativity. It was a small box that connected to a TV and to a Mac in the home. A tiny remote allowed the owner to play music and movies from the PC on the TV. The set up and use was hugely complicated. Movies purchased from iTunes were low resolution and looked fuzzy on HDTV sets.
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