Another bad Apple

Robert S. Thau (rst@ai.mit.edu)
Tue, 13 May 1997 14:39:36 -0400 (EDT)


tbyars@earthlink.net writes:

Ummm... Tim, I suppose it is interesting to hear about the demise of
yet another Apple marketing failure. ("Pippin! It's a really low cost
home computer! Oh, it's too feeble to run even home user software?
That's OK, it's really a multimedia game player! Ummm... that puts us
in the Nintendo space and we're too expensive to compete there as
well? I got it now! It's a Network Computer! This time fer sure!!")

However, I'm not sure why the pull quote was...

> * The toy became an instant hit after its debut in November, with shipments
> *reaching about five million units.

when the toy referred to in the quote is the Tamagotchi, Bandai's
wildly popular electronic pet surrogate (a remarkably Phildickian
product --- do androids dream of electric... canaries?) and nothing
whatever to do with Apple. If Pippin had sold, they wouldn't have
pulled it...

rst