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I'll counter and say I think they got everything right, including execution. I just think you're ignoring the cultural context. If you went back to the 90's an

I'll counter and say I think they got everything right, including execution. I just think you're ignoring the cultural context. If you went back to the 90's and showed a concept video featuring pervasive personalization based on data mining, no-UI uis, and things that just work, people would see fever dreams at best and unwholesome value-destroying privacy-invading witchcraft at worst, the brand of which informed science fiction of the time. I don't think the iPhone would have sold back then. But if you gave them the flashy stuff in this concept video, Microsoft would have been Google and Apple combined.

csixty4 12y ago
> people would see fever dreams at best and unwholesome value-destroying privacy-invading witchcraft at worst Oh yes. The hacker subculture, even parts of the tech industry in general at the time was dealing with things like the Clipper Chip, the V-Chip, and Operation Sundevil. There was a love of tech, but a good dose of distrust as well. There was also a certain aesthetic to 90s tech. It needed to be obnoxious and tech-looking. Well, everything needed to be obnoxious & in-your-face in the 90s.