Ahead of Its Time: 9 Tech Products That Were Too Early to Market

[mailpup]

You feel old, I'm almost 40...

Isn't that the same as avoidz?

 

[Julio Franco]

Two problems with the article:

1) Sega Channel on-demand gaming service
1a) Videotron in Canada had a gaming service through their cable box in '89/90...which predates Sega Channel by a few years.

2) Palm Treo smartphone
2a) The smartphone has been around since '94, so Palm didn't create the smartphone market either!

Thanks for the feedback. Do note however that we didn't intend to catch the very first glimpse of a current successful technology or trend, for example see how we chose the Palm Treo instead of Apple's Newton. Evidently it's a subjective list, but we tried to include products that we thought were way cool at the time and showed promise, some were even successful, but none have continued to live as they've been replaced by better timed, more modern and polished counterparts of present time.

 

[mlauzon]

Thanks for the feedback. Do note however that we didn't intend to catch the very first glimpse of a current successful technology or trend, for example see how we chose the Palm Treo instead of Apple's Newton. Evidently it's a subjective list, but we tried to include products that we thought were way cool at the time and showed promise, some were even successful, but none have continued to live as they've been replaced by better timed, more modern and polished counterparts of present time.

Apple's Newton wasn't the first PDA -- now known as a tablet as far as I'm concerned -- that distinction would go to Psion's Organizer II.

The first smartphone was IBM's Simon.

 

[GhostRyder]

The Nintendo Virtual Boy was pretty cool. Too bad it was too cool for that time xD.

Yea, I know right!
To be honest, its quite cool, I mean the games look pretty good once you focus them in (Even though they are in red and black) and the controller actually honestly feels pretty natural which I find odd because by looking at it, I would think the opposite. Its fun to play and I show it around from time to time at conventions of club meetings/events as a joke and to let people try it. It actually lasted a bit longer in Japan and had a few more games though most of the Japanese only games that were not released in America are considered rare-Extremely rare and cost a fortune.

Other than giving you a headache and having to sit at a desk to play, I think it would have been a cool device had they actually thought about the comfort of the player playing the device. That to me is the biggest issue right there with it.

 

[xband411]

Cool tidbit: Some of the guys who created Xband went on to create Web TV. They later sold the rights for Web TV to Microsoft and made a pretty penny.

 

[senketsu]

VCR Plus+ was quite popular where I am, pretty surprised though that codes were still delivered in 2010!

 

[Estebanquito]

" arduous task of entering in the specific date, time and channel manually" hahaha are you serious???? These kids complain about everything, even movin a finger.