The 6 most over-hyped gadgets
At a time when the Google phone is generating a lot of hype, we look at what happened to six gadgets that were supposed to change the world.
At the beginning of the new millennium, Dean Camen, the inventor of this gadget, had famously predicted that the machine “will be to the car what the car was to the horse and buggy.” Last seen, an uber cool Jeff Bridges was seen on one of these in the recent fi lm Iron Man. Like him, this gadget was also pulverised.
Despite being among the earliest PDAs in the market and having some cutting-edge technology like handwriting recognition (back in 1993, when Rihanna was a toddler), the gadget’s inability to fi t into most pockets and the lukewarm reception from geeks almost instantly killed the product. Apple waited fi ve years before kissing Newton goodbye.
No list on gadgets will be complete without a posting (or should we say pasting) from Redmond. Supposedly MS’s answer to the iPod, this gadget sold about 2 million units by May 2008. Before you say “not bad”, here’s a little cud to chew on: Apple sold over 10 million iPods last quarter.
Apart from its odious name–iSmell– this product really did not have much working for it. Once plugged into your comp’s PC port, it would allow you to sample odours of smell-enabled websites. For example, one could smell the latest Davidoff perfume or the menu of a restaurant. It has disappeared without trace.
Gadgets that make you laugh, but not by design, pop up regularly. But it’s wise to remember that Leonardo da Vinci stuck levers to huge wings and tried to make men fl y. Everybody had a belly laugh back then. Try laughing at that idea now.
And here are two gadgets that succeeded beyond anyone’s dreams
Steve Jobs’s comeback vehicle as Apple’s CEO, the iPod has sold more than 150 million units, making it the best selling digital audio player in history. As for the latest iVersion–the iPhone–it has reportedly captured a fourth of the US smart phone market within a few months of its launch. But it has proved to be a damp squib in India.
