Round-up: 15 Worst Apple Predictions Ever

Pete Mortensen ()

nostradamus.jpgOur pals over at Wired’s Gadget Lab have gathered together 15 of the most foul-smelling Apple forecasts ever, including a number of hits from the ever-prescient Rob Enderle. This is my all-time favorite:

Hewlett Packard iPod To Be a Winner

“The expectation on the iPod is that HP’s version will probably outsell Apple’s version relatively quickly.” — Rob Enderle, quoted in MacObserver in August 2004.

The whole list is hilarious. It still doesn’t include my favorite of all time, delivered by (among many others) Cliff Joseph, which was that in 1998 Apple was ready to move into the Internet Set-Top Box game with a sub-$1000 product called “Columbus.” This was a done deal. As you might recall, Columbus was the iMac.

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Check the list and report back. Any you think they missed?

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About the author

Petemortensen

Pete Mortensen is a design strategist for consulting firm Jump Associates and the co-author of Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper When They Create Widespread Empathy, a book and blog that are significantly more interesting than you might initially think. Pete's particular Apple avocations are both around design--interface and industrial. Follow him on Twitter!

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Posted in Rumors |

  • Church of Apple

    “Coming Soon: Apple’s Subnotebook/Tablet/UMPC/Newton 2″

    I think this will become a reality, just not soon. I don’t think the hardware is available cheap enough at the moment but integrating flash memory into computers is a no-brainer.
    The question is, will they make a NEW line of notebooks or simply incorporate the new technology into the existing lines?
    I’m for the latter. I can see MBPs being integrated with said technology first; that certainly seams to be Apple’s MO these days (think intel chips, iSight cameras, the iPhone…)

  • Church of Apple

    Oh, and the best prediction ever:
    “The Macintosh will die in another few years and its really sad”

    -Steve Jobs
    April 20, 1995

  • Church of Apple
  • Steve Ballmer

    They were just off by a couple of years!

    [Don’t push it with self-promoting spam, Steve]