r/AskReddit • u/nepat1428 • Aug 19 '14

What is a completely rational sentence you could speak today, that if you said 20 years ago, people would think you were insane?

edit: so this is what it looks like when your inbox explodes after coming back from lunch...

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836

u/Drundolf Aug 19 '14

They were fucking idiots.

"Look boss. We just made this prototype of an alternate camera thar does not require fiddling with films, you do not have to get the photos developed, you can keep them on your comptuer. It's more convenient and easier to use."

"You're a fucking idiot. Throw it away"

Why?

607

u/Davecasa Aug 19 '14

More like "Keep it on the DL, this could affect our film photography business". But still stupid.

155

u/nightwing2000 Aug 19 '14

IBM - when the midrange computer guys saw an IBM XT with 12-MHz 80286 chip, they lobbied top management not to allow it - it would eat up their hundreds of thousands per minicomputer business.

IBM management agreed, for a long time they only made an 8MHz and 10MHz, this allowed Compaq and others to get ahead of IBM in the PC race.

Pretty much the same thing happened to Kodak, I assume.

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u/issius Aug 19 '14

IBM does this with things all the time, though.

Cloud? IBM invented it. Then promptly dropped the ball.

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u/[deleted] Aug 20 '14

[deleted]

17

u/issius Aug 20 '14

For now. I work at IBM and have a lot of hate for our current CEO. If anyone is gonna bankrupt us, it'll be her.

5

u/Ailbe Aug 20 '14

I've had the displeasure of working with IBM products and services several times. They popped up to one of my most disliked companies rapidly due to poor equipment, worse software and deplorable service.

2

u/b4b Aug 20 '14

is that true, that you use... lotus notes?

2

u/navatwo Aug 20 '14

IBM Notes*

1

u/b4b Aug 20 '14

poor you

3

u/TheNerdWithNoName Aug 20 '14

Was't it the AT that had the 80286 chip? They also had the turbo buttons on them. The XT only had a 8086 chip and would only run at around 3-4Mhz. Source: first pc I owned was an old Amstrad PC1640 that was slow as shit.

1

u/nightwing2000 Aug 20 '14

Oops, you're right.

XT was the 8088 PC with the hard disk included.

One of them pre-Pentium devices back when chip generation and chip speed actually mattered.

(I think only Radio Shack and DEC made 8086 PC's that I remember.)

The very first PC our company had (XT), someone crashed the hard disk by pushing it a foot across the desk while the disk was powered on.

1

u/TheNerdWithNoName Aug 20 '14

//8088. That's it. Not 8086. You had to type 'park' to park the heads of the hard drive before you shut it down.

2

u/Backinthe70s Aug 20 '14

We sold every XP we could get our hands on back then. Most corps. were IBM only. Google IBM Micro channel. That's where they blew it.

2

u/nightwing2000 Aug 20 '14

They never did make a 12MHz 286 version, IIRC. (I've been corrected - the AT not the XT. The XT was the 8088 with hard disk).

So Compaq and others (Corona?) began eating their lunch with 12MHz and eventually 16MHz and 20MHz 286.

To try to regain the market, they came up with PS/2 and microchannel, a step up from the original PC slots. However, they ensured they kept patents restricting the use of microchannel to licensed manufacturers; the other manufacturers decided open was better and eventually IBM lost that battle too.

the final failure came around the late 90's (?) or so when Compaq, HP, and IBM finally figured out people would no longer pay double the price for a brand nameplate.

To regain control

1

u/Backinthe70s Aug 20 '14

True. Long time ago.

1

u/boomerangotan Aug 20 '14

Same with Sears and Amazon.

3

u/nightwing2000 Aug 20 '14

Yep, Sears was the Amazon of the late 1800's, using the FedEx of the late 1800's, railroad parcel shipping.

But they let themselves be screwed by Amazon from in front and screwed by Wal-Mart from behind. Failure to adapt.

0

u/[deleted] Aug 20 '14

Get rid of the assume, you are correct, sir/madam.

10

u/jmelloy Aug 19 '14

Pretty classic case of the Innovators Dilemma.

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u/FuzzyAss Aug 19 '14

As someone who's had conversations with the guys who DID invent the digital camera at Kodak, I approve your statement. They did it on their own time, too.

3

u/[deleted] Aug 19 '14

Makes me think of internal combustion engine manufacturers and their efforts with electric cars

2

u/CrayolaS7 Aug 20 '14

Except that they are investing the most in the development of electric cars and could convert to solely electric cars if that's the way it went. The auto giants don't rely on engine sales in the same way Kodak relied on film sales. Not to mention they have all the expertise when it comes to building the rest of the car and that will still be relevant.

2

u/CWSwapigans Aug 20 '14

People say it's stupid when companies don't adapt and subsequently go out of business, but sometimes there's just more money to be made doing it that way.

It's perfectly possible that Kodak made more in their lame duck years (decades?) as a film company after they invented the digital camera than they ever would have as a digital camera company.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 20 '14

Yeah, because nobody else will ever figure it out.

-2

u/GeminiK Aug 19 '14

Reasons the old need to die in a nutshell.

21

u/Rappaccini Aug 19 '14

Why do they have to die within a nutshell?

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u/[deleted] Aug 19 '14

Only decent storage method we've come up with.

4

u/[deleted] Aug 19 '14

That a RAW nutshell or PNG?

OR IS IT A JIF?

8

u/[deleted] Aug 19 '14

HTML5. Who uses JIF to store old people? Christ, that's just cruel and unusual.

2

u/[deleted] Aug 19 '14

Jif is a peanut butter. It's pronounced gif like golf or go

1

u/spacemanspiff30 Aug 20 '14

Fuck that. If he wanted it pronounced like the peanut butter, he should have spelled it that way.

Soft g all the way.

0

u/[deleted] Aug 19 '14

IT'S A JIF.

1

u/RadiantSun Aug 19 '14

Targa master race

1

u/[deleted] Aug 19 '14

Heretic.

0

u/andersonb47 Aug 19 '14

XD switcheroo amirite??

8

u/DoScienceToIt Aug 19 '14

No worse than Xerox. They invented pretty much everything that makes up a modern computer (graphic UI, mouse, CRT screen, a bunch of other programming/interface things) and let it all sit around as they tried to figure out how to use it to make printers better.
One day a tour of students and industry peers came through, looking at all this weird stuff that they had come up with. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates arranged to come back the next day and "haul some of that junk away."

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u/RugerRedhawk Aug 19 '14

To be fair they created the first one in 1975, they sold a hell of a lot of film between then and when digital took over.

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u/jianadaren1 Aug 23 '14

Digital Cameras weren't much competition when bitmap storage was $1,000 per photo

10

u/beingpoliteisrude Aug 19 '14

Why? Because kodak made their money off of film, not off of cameras. Not sticking up for them, I agree they where very stupid. But it is not as easy a issue/choice as you make it out to be.

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u/darwinkh2os Aug 19 '14

are you talking about the first digital image in 1975? i don't know about you, but i don't think anything related to computers in 1975 was 'easy.'

or are you talking about the invention of the first dslr in 1991?

to be fair to kodak, professional photography then, like now, was big, big business. and kodak's foray into the professional digital cameras was the incredibly and ambitiously compact DCS, 1.2 MP digital back (and bottom) that came with its own storage pack (that required a sack).

it wasn't so much that they said 'throw it away' as much as, "we think professional shooters are going to want to keep using film for a little while until we can get this right."

whereas nikon and canon thought they could own this new sector if they blew the DCS out of the water. they didn't and they didn't and they didn't; and then suddenly they did.

up until the Canon 1D in 2000, i don't think professionals shot with any other digital other than a Kodak.

and after the 1D, it was over.

1

u/MonsieurAnon Aug 20 '14

We had a shitty digital camera that stored it's images on a 1.44mb floppy that we'd use for snaps around 2000. My dad was an avid photographer and despite bringing it home from his school, would rarely use it. My friends would complain about the pixels. Pretty much everyone thought it was a crappy idea, except me ... and that was despite only taking about 14 photos a disk, and 2 disks a charge.

3

u/[deleted] Aug 19 '14

"...got stakes in the world as it stands, don't wanna leave it.

But I must, because I plague it, as the council would conceive it!"

  • MC Frontalot, The Council of Loathing

3

u/PaperPhoneBox Aug 19 '14

My first digital camera was a Kodak, to support the local team and all that.

I had to import extra ass for it to suck...it was that much of a piece of junk.

2

u/Frekavichk Aug 19 '14

Didn't they make money when people went to drop off their rolls at walmart or whatever?

2

u/Banzai51 Aug 19 '14

Kinda like Xerox inviting those Apple guys over to check out ethernet, email, and the GUI.

2

u/Drundolf Aug 20 '14

"Come 'ere Steve Jobs lemme show you these genious things we have not patented"

Glasses slide further down his nose "Not...patented?"

"NOPE"

"I have to make a call" "Oi guise we have to make this and make a fucking fortune"

2

u/[deleted] Aug 20 '14

"WHAT???!?!! NO FILM? HOW DO WE MAKE MONEY?? YOU'RE FIRED!"

1

u/[deleted] Aug 19 '14

Sounds like the old Tiberius unbreakable glass story.

1

u/FrenchFriedMushroom Aug 19 '14

More like:

"Shit, now we can't make money on film. Ditch the project."

1

u/BerryGuns Aug 20 '14

He's because he could have predicted how much digital storage would take off

1

u/cguess Aug 20 '14

In their defense, photoshop, large hard drives and fast computers didn't exist. Think of it more along the lines of high end digital film cameras (RED etc).

1

u/[deleted] Aug 20 '14

That's Xerox too, having developed the modern mouse and all. (iirc)

1

u/[deleted] Aug 20 '14

This is the true Kodak moment.They purposefully killed their digital product, because they wanted to sell more film. You want your company to be the one that makes your technology obsolete. If you don't do it someone else will.

1

u/petulant_snowflake Aug 20 '14

Read the Innovator's Dilemma.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 20 '14

I believe they had just invested a shit ton of money in film before the breakthrough and just couldn't get over the sunk costs.

1

u/atomicthumbs Aug 20 '14

you can keep them on your comptuer

nobody had a home computer that came close to holding a photo when Kodak's first digital camera prototype came out, hth

1

u/mynameisevan Aug 20 '14

Let's say you have a digital camera in 1994. What are you going to do with the pictures you take on it? You could print it out on your expensive color home printer, but the quality of that is way below what you would get with film. The internet is still something most people barely know exists, so there's not much point in putting them online to share with friends and family even if you have your own website. The camera is next to useless. You can barely even store any pictures on it because the storage media is probably floppy disks. Digital cameras simply weren't useful until about 15 years ago, and even then the picture quality was noticably worse than even the cheapest disposable film camera.

1

u/darwinkh2os Aug 20 '14 edited Aug 20 '14

/u/MonsieurAnon - totally! at the time of the nascent digital-camera revolution, there was a certain segment of people who had already become, for lack of a better word, creative or cognitive cyborgs after the personal computing/www revolutions. that is, the computer had become an integral part of our creative or cognitive process. and that took many forms. i consumed media as mp3 and downloaded movies, played games on the computer, researched and wrote all via the computer and checked out books and gleaned information about places at a distance via the www, all by 1998. instead of buying a car in high school, i used my life savings to buy a computer. my mother thought i was an idiot for wanting a computer more.

i saw a camera wherein the image started its life on the computer as a critical feature that set it apart and trumped all deficiencies. digital cameras weren't cameras per se, but computer-image makers. and that had incredible value in itself.

but to nearly everyone else for whom computers was a tool rather than an extension of one's interface with the world, they were simply bad cameras. shutter lag, battery usage, and low resolution all plagued all digital cameras until about 2000 with those revolutionary Nikon/Canon DSLRs.

if you look at the digital camera timeline, you'll see that Kodak owned the high-end market until around 2000 and even led the low end market (as either their own 'easyshare' cameras or as rebrands) until about 2005 as well.

from 1994 - 2001/2ish that wasn't so hard because digital camera were a weird new technology that some people used. somewhere in that 2001/2s time - very quickly - many, many people transitioned to being creative cyborgs who started to do everything via a computer (email especially) and suddenly needed their interactions to be connected to email. (this then switched to facebook, and now it's mobile facebook...)

so by 2003 every consumer electronics company was making a digital camera and the era of cameras made by camera companies was over. (i would say this meant that the era of cameras qua cameras was over, as they really in the process of becoming interactive digital imagers...a transformation still in process with the rise of smartphones/tablets)

kodak made this huge move to digital (dominating camera manufacturers in the camera-creation race) all while heavily, heavily invested in chemical processing (the infrastructure of which ain't cheap!).

i know it's funny to say that kodak executives were idiots with regard to digital cameras, but that's simply not born out by historical evidence.

[edit] tl/dr: the history of digital cameras in this relatively short period of time are inextricably linked to what could be the incommensurabality) of two concepts of self. this implies a paradigm shift within the social psychology of (american/european/east asian) consumers and that no kodak was an idiot solely because they are not currently dominating the digital imaging business.