The iPod? What a rubbish idea... in 2001 ;-)

Matt Weston at BusinessBricks posted a link to the Original Ipod announcement thread on MacRumours from 2001.  His post reads:

MacRumors
thread via S
vs. N. ‘I still can’t believe this! All this hype for something so
ridiculous! Who cares about an MP3 player? I want something new! I want them to
think differently! Why oh why would they do this?! It’s so wrong! It’s so
stupid!”

It makes for phenomenally interesting reading.  For example, there’s a chap on there hounding Apple for not focusing on their server line:

Are you really aiming to become a glorified consumer gimmicks firm?

Then there’s another cynic commenting:

All that hype for an MP3 player? Break-thru digital device? The Reality
Distiortion Fieldâ„¢ is starting to warp Steve’s mind if he thinks for
one second that this thing is gonna take off.

But Kudos to the likes of member Traveler who, bringing a refreshing reality to the thread, commented:

We live in the YEAR 2001… not 6000 years from now when ridiculously
awsome technology will exist. No other mp3 player has a harddrive like
this… 5gigs… **** yeah. A rio of the same size offers 64megs. Jesum
Crow, get over your moping.. .this is revolutionary…. plus it’s just
the beggining. This device litterally bests anything on the market by
about 100x

It’s all too easy to get cynical and think you’ve seen it all.  Which am I?  Hmm..

As I was reading through this I was wondering what products, services and companies have recently been introduced that many have either written off, derided or simply ignored much as many of those did in the above thread.

I think, for example, that when I read Sony Ericsson had done a deal with Google/Blogger to add a ‘send to blogger’ function for photos, I quietly wrote that off along the same lines as Carlo Longino did at Mobhappy (i.e. cool idea, but, you know, I don’t use Blogger myself… so…) 

I did the same with Vodafone and Google’s announcement.  Who cares. Next. Move on.  Get rid of your walled gardens PLEASE…….. 

Have I just missed a huge trick?  For example, could the Sony / Blogger news be an earth-shattering we’ll-all-ignore-the-cost-of-mms moment?  Who cares if it’s 40p a picture, I’m sending them to blogger in a click?  Am I bang on the money criticising the hell out of Hutchison (thanks for the spelling reminder, Dan!) for not allowing open web access by default?   I don’t know.   I do think I’m right most of the time but absolutely quite prepared to be the total donut in the corner and own up to it. 

Part of the reason for starting SMS Text News in the first place was so that I could track developments more reliably myself.  Everything seems to have happened "a few months ago" in my mind… so it’ll be interesting to come back to this post in exactly a year’s time and see where the marketplace is. 

Seriously, in a year’s time, if we’re all still being flogged texts at 14 pence and picture messages at close to 50p, I will go nuts.

As for being more or less right?  Well… all one can do, I suppose, is let your mind wander regularly, consider the possibilities from multiple angles, read as widely as possible and continue to expose yourself (in a philosophical sense) to smart people, eh? 😉