10 and a half things you won’t believe Apple made

10 and a half things you won’t believe Apple made

Apple has been responsible for some beautifully designed products in its time. Many of them sell like hot cakes and delight their owners but occasionally things don’t go to plan. Like the rest of us, Apple has its fair share of skeletons in its corporate cupboard, from ideas that were ahead of their time to ideas that really shouldn’t have seen the light of day. Here are ten (and a half) things you won’t believe Apple made.

1) This digital camera

Apple didn’t invent digital photography – that was Kodak engineer Steven Sasson back in 1975 – but it was one of the first companies to market digital cameras to normal people. The 1994 QuickTake 100 was designed by Apple, made by Kodak and could take either eight photos at 640 x 480, 32 photos at 320 x 240, or a mixture of the two sizes. It didn’t sell well and Steve Jobs canned the QuickTake range in 1997.

2) This early iPad

Apple invented the iPad 22 years ago: the MessagePad, a personal digital assistant running Apple’s Newton operating system, was a big-screened tablet with handwriting recognition and a pen-based interface. MessagePads were nice devices but the world wasn’t quite ready for mobile computing. Faster processors, touchscreens, Wi-Fi and mobile broadband would change all of that… eventually.

3) These hippy iMacs

The beautiful, colourful iMac revolutionised computer design, but where do you go when you’ve used up all the colours of a candy store? The answer was obvious. Vomit! The Flower Power iMac looked like the unfortunate aftermath of a child’s sweetie binge, while the Dalmatian iMac looked like a cat carrier. Critics were divided: some thought they were ugly, others thought they were really ugly, and still others thought they should be thrown down a well and never spoken of again.

4) These socks (that aren’t for your feet)

What do you get the iPod that has everything? Apple had the answer: socks. But these were no ordinary socks. These were brightly coloured, iPod-shaped socks from Apple, which is why they cost £19 for a pack of six instead of the traditional three pairs for a pound.

5) This boom box

With iPod sales soaring, Apple had a bright idea: why not make a speaker too? The 2006 iPod Hi-Fi was the result, but it wasn’t a soaraway success. It was pricey, of course, but that wasn’t all: it didn’t work with all iPods, the connector was easily broken, it only charged Firewire iPods and you could sum up the reviews in one word: meh. It was discontinued a year later.

6) This beige box

You know how Apple doesn’t make dull beige boxes? Look at this dull beige box. This, ladies and gentlemen, is a Macintosh Quadra, and while its innards were pretty good we need to call on pop duo Daphne and Celeste to describe its appearance. Ready? “U-G-L-Y! You ain’t got no alibi! You ugly! You ugly!”

7) This $9000 Mac

Amazingly, this isn’t the highest price tag a Mac’s ever had – that honour goes to the genuinely revolutionary Lisa, which went for just under US$10,000 – but this limited-edition Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh from 1997 was three times the price of a similarly specced Power Mac. Apple was forced to cut the price three times during its two-year lifespan: first to US$7499, then US$3500 and finally US$1995. Bad luck if you bought one on launch day.

8) This TV

The Apple TV is hardly a new idea. Apple launched the none-more-black Macintosh TV, a Macintosh that was also a cable-ready TV set, back in 1993. It wasn’t a huge success, but its TV tuner card would go on to become a popular accessory for many Mac owners.

9) This headset

The Apple Bluetooth Headset was a great illustration of Apple simultaneously at its best and worst: it was beautifully designed, made and packaged, easy to use, stupidly expensive and lacked key features such as mute, redial and volume controls. It was launched with the original iPhone in 2007 and quietly dumped two years later.

10) This games console

Apple’s got pretty good at making devices to play games on these days: the iPhone, iPad and even Apple TV all do it pretty well. But in the mid-nineties, when the company tried to make a console whose only purpose was to play games, things quickly went south. The Pippin was essentially a Mac repackaged as “an integral part of the consumer audiovisual, stereo and television environment” and made by third-party manufacturers. It bombed. Oh, and there’s one more thing…

10.5) This iTunes phone

This is only half a thing because Apple didn’t actually design or make it, but it did endorse it: the look on Steve Jobs’ face when he showed off the clearly rubbish Motorola ROKR E1 iTunes phone was a picture. The days before iPhones were dark days indeed.