We’ve all said things we didn’t mean in the heat of the moment or done stupid things when we were younger. Luckily, most of us aren’t a CEO for a multinational corporation. When they get it wrong, everyone watches – and the more they dig their heels in, the bigger it is when they have to back down. Click on for the top five technology u-turns.
Steve Jobs: No Video iPod
Back in April 2004, when iPods just did music, Steve Jobs told a press conference that the iPod was “about the music, stupid”, paraphrasing Bill Clinton, and sticking to the line that a video enabled iPod was not in the works. Jobs’ reasoning was that you could listen to music in the background, but you had to pay attention to movies: “You can’t watch a video and drive a car,” he said. “We’re focused on music.”
Spin on 18 months and guess what popped up? A fifth generation iPod with video playback capabilities. Unfortunately with Jobs, we’ll never know for sure if this was an unintended u-turn or a deliberate ploy just to try and throw people off the scent.
Eric Schmidt resigns from Apple board
In August 2006 Apple made computers and Google searched the web, so appointing Google CEO Eric Schmidt to the Apple board seemed like a no brainer.
Spin on three years and it’s much more complicated. Google now makes browsers and a mobile phone OS, while Apple is branching out into web apps. As Steve Jobs put it: “Unfortunately, as Google enters more of Apple’s core businesses, with Android and now Chrome OS, Eric’s effectiveness as an Apple Board member will be significantly diminished.”
Facebook Terms and Conditions
Earlier this year in February, Facebook decided to do a bit of housekeeping and updated its terms and conditions. The internet noticed and an almighty row broke out, with people claiming Facebook was trying to steal anything they uploaded.
The backlash was so big, Facebook switched its terms back within days and then entered into a long, drawn out process of letting the users vote on any future changes to how they get to use the site for free.
Apple iPhone web apps
The App Store has been a runaway success, but it wasn’t always in Apple’s masterplan. When the wonder phone first arrived, the only provision for third party programs was web apps running in Safari – only Apple got to make native applications.
There were unofficial ways around this but it wasn’t until a year later when the iPhone SDK was announced, bringing the App Store and third party programs to Apple’s touchy feely platform.
Toshiba Blu-ray
Toshiba fought long and hard to make HD DVD the successor to DVD, but in the end the Blu-ray camp won by wooing the movie studios and throttling the supply of titles.
Tosh walked away from the format in February 2008, but it took over a year before it committed to making its own Blu-ray player. No doubt a hard pill to swallow, since it even tried to fob the market off with a super expensive upscaling DVD player in the interim.
(image by Winstonavich)
