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I can totally understand why the Canon Cat was a flop. At the time it came onto the market, mouse-driven GUIs were largely seen as the thing of the future, and
by rob74 4y ago
I can totally understand why the Canon Cat was a flop. At the time it came onto the market, mouse-driven GUIs were largely seen as the thing of the future, and those didn't have to be explained: moving the mouse and clicking was like pointing your finger at the screen and tapping it directly. And then this weird thing with no GUI and no mouse comes along. Its UI may have been easy to use too, but it probably needed a lot of explaining and getting used to before you could internalize it, so only a few power users really made the effort to familiarize themselves with it.
- retrocryptid 4y agoIt came out in '87, 3 years before windows 3.0. Macs were still twice as expensive as PCs and accounted for something like 3-5 percent of new computer sales. DOS was the most popular PC OS at the time, and wasn't known for its user friendliness. So the idea of a "turn it on and start typing" machine had some cachet. I think the near absolute lack of marketing is what doomed the Cat and IA.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y agoApple 2e and 2c was still popular in 87 and probably sold more than Mac in that year.