Apple may need 'one more thing' to avoid Polaroid's fate
- Cromwell Schubarth
- Senior Technology Reporter- Silicon Valley Business Journal
- Email | Twitter | Google+
Apple's latest iPhone rollout
does nothing to address questions as to whether the company still has the
magical ability to innovate that it had under Steve
Jobs.
Until it delivers a completely new category of product, the Cupertino company
risks comparisons to other companies that lost their creative spark — like
Polaroid, the company that pioneered instant photography.
Christopher
Bonanos, author of "Instant: The Story of Polaroid," wrote on Slate Tuesday
that Apple could follow that fabled photo pioneer down the
road to irrelevancy — a scenario that hits home to me, the son of a longtime
Polaroid photo engineer.
Bonanos has a decent point, but he downplays a key factor: Polaroid's decline
came at the hands of its genius founder. Apple's genius co-founder died while
still on top.Much like Apple's series of breakthrough devices, from iPod to iPhone to iPad, I remember Polaroid had a string of beautifully designed cameras from the late 1950s though the mid-1970s.
Back then, it was easy to share my dad's enthusiasm for the latest test cameras and films he brought home. They were state-of-the-art and cool to behold, from the early peel-apart pack film versions through the Swingers and fold-up SX 70s.
I still use some of the cameras,
loaded with new film made by a company called The Impossible Project or Fuji,
along with expired film I find on eBay. Click here to see an "Analog Travelog" of my work that Impossible just
posted or here to see a retro photo gallery I did recently of key Silicon Valley
tech birthplaces.
But I remember distinctly the day
when I believe that the company went off track. It was the work of Edwin
Land, the perfectionist Polaroid founder who Jobs idolized, not the fault of
the people who followed him.
Cromwell Schubarth is the Senior Technology Reporter
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