5 ms·

While I don't remember a single punchline on management, their media was rather expensive at a time when affordable CD-RW drives and media basically pulled the

by z2 7y ago

While I don't remember a single punchline on management, their media was rather expensive at a time when affordable CD-RW drives and media basically pulled the floor from under them. The response was kind of expected--after flailing around on existing storage products, they released a branded 'ZipCD 650' drive to salvage what they could of the market, while trying to hide that it was in fact an overpriced CD-RW drive that used plain CR-R/RW discs. In retrospect, it seems really hard to keep iterating on the next proprietary Zip/Jaz drive technology as a single company when your competition is basically everyone else who are collectively working on portable storage with wider adoption rates.

tracker1 7y ago
They didn't license the technology under reasonable terms, for the most part is what killed them. Even up against CD/DVD, most would rather have a zip100 or zip250 disc that was more reusable. IIRC, there was some licensing for disc mfg, but there were price/licensing restrictions in place. If they'd licensed disks at say $1, and the drives at $10, and let other companies build compatible products, it would have lived a lot longer and they may have even influenced the transition to USB thumb drives. I worked in 2nd level phone support at one time, but had no insight into anything the company did. Aside: the Jazz drive was effectively a detachable internal drive, where the disks came out. A damaged drive could damage the disks, and damaged disks could damage the drive. When an RMA happened, I'd usually do both. In the end they had some really good engineering, and a lot of missed opportunities.
CydeWeys 7y ago
From everything I've heard about it, the Jaz drive was an unmitigated failure caused by bad hardware choices (basically, the "disk" contained hard drive platters and the drive contained the rest of the hard drive mechanism, and you'd insert the one into the other!!). It was also much too expensive. If they'd never embarked on that ill-fated idea, and instead continue to put all of their wood behind zip drives (and maintaining compatibility), they could've done better. I agree that licensing would've helped a lot. The zip disks were simply too expensive, and they always felt like a proprietary format in a way that 3.5" floppies did not. I was only a teenager at the time but even I was thinking "So wait, this one company is the only manufacturer? Seems niche, not the guaranteed next thing."

by z2 7y ago

tracker1 7y ago

They didn't license the technology under reasonable terms, for the most part is what killed them. Even up against CD/DVD, most would rather have a zip100 or zip250 disc that was more reusable. IIRC, there was some licensing for disc mfg, but there were price/licensing restrictions in place. If they'd licensed disks at say $1, and the drives at $10, and let other companies build compatible products, it would have lived a lot longer and they may have even influenced the transition to USB thumb drives. I worked in 2nd level phone support at one time, but had no insight into anything the company did. Aside: the Jazz drive was effectively a detachable internal drive, where the disks came out. A damaged drive could damage the disks, and damaged disks could damage the drive. When an RMA happened, I'd usually do both. In the end they had some really good engineering, and a lot of missed opportunities.

CydeWeys 7y ago

From everything I've heard about it, the Jaz drive was an unmitigated failure caused by bad hardware choices (basically, the "disk" contained hard drive platters and the drive contained the rest of the hard drive mechanism, and you'd insert the one into the other!!). It was also much too expensive. If they'd never embarked on that ill-fated idea, and instead continue to put all of their wood behind zip drives (and maintaining compatibility), they could've done better. I agree that licensing would've helped a lot. The zip disks were simply too expensive, and they always felt like a proprietary format in a way that 3.5" floppies did not. I was only a teenager at the time but even I was thinking "So wait, this one company is the only manufacturer? Seems niche, not the guaranteed next thing."