You have to admit, though, that it seemed like a dream that the market would ever shift to videophones. New videophones came out every few years in the 80's an

You have to admit, though, that it seemed like a dream that the market would ever shift to videophones. New videophones came out every few years in the 80's and 90's and failed, time and again. I saw them in Popular Mechanics, I saw them in Omni Magazine, I saw them in the bargain bin at Circuit City, still overpriced. Why would you buy this thing? What's the point of spending all the extra money on seeing the other person? Chicken and egg, most people don't have one. Won't you have to do your makeup before making a phone call? It didn't occur to many of us that your phone would be your only computer and that it would have two to six cameras so it would be a videophone by default and especially it was hard to believe the phone companies would ever let such functionality be accessed with an ordinary phone number. On its own, the videophone could never have succeeded. It had to be in a convergence device. It also never occurred to me that people would like a videophone so they can hold it at waist level and shout at it in a doctor's waiting room instead of holding it up to their ear, despite the unflattering angle of neck fat tucked loosely under a chin. </bitter>