WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.440 Memory sticks, zip drives, cartrivation. 00:00:04.440 --> 00:00:07.800 For decades, tech companies have continued to think 00:00:07.800 --> 00:00:10.840 proprietary storage formats that only work 00:00:10.840 --> 00:00:14.720 with their own stuff are, for some reason, a good idea, 00:00:14.720 --> 00:00:20.560 even though they tend to fail after a few years. So let's look at three next big things 00:00:20.560 --> 00:00:25.240 that went the way of Betamax. First off, the memory stick from Sony, 00:00:25.240 --> 00:00:29.360 which how do they manage to trademark such a generic name? 00:00:29.360 --> 00:00:32.680 These bad boys first appeared back in 1998 00:00:32.680 --> 00:00:38.480 when standalone digital cameras were first starting to catch on and Sony digital cameras in particular 00:00:38.480 --> 00:00:41.600 were very popular. So the brasset Sony thought, 00:00:41.600 --> 00:00:45.160 hey, what if we start selling our own flash memory 00:00:45.160 --> 00:00:48.640 that people will have to buy to keep using our cameras? 00:00:48.640 --> 00:00:53.560 I mean, it worked great for the PlayStation. And that's exactly what they did. 00:00:53.560 --> 00:00:56.800 The memory stick wasn't vastly superior technologically 00:00:56.800 --> 00:01:00.160 to the more open compact flash or smart media cards 00:01:00.160 --> 00:01:04.840 that were also common at the time, but they quickly became popular due to how many people 00:01:04.840 --> 00:01:09.320 had Sony cameras, and they also worked in Sony's digital Walkman players, 00:01:09.320 --> 00:01:13.600 the PlayStation portable, and even their lineup of robot dogs. 00:01:13.600 --> 00:01:18.160 That helped them grab a good chunk of flash memory market share in the early 2000s, 00:01:18.160 --> 00:01:21.720 but it all changed once the now familiar SD card 00:01:21.720 --> 00:01:26.480 started gaining popularity. Because unlike memory stick, it was an open standard 00:01:26.480 --> 00:01:33.200 whose developers pushed hard to have it adopted in gadgets like other cameras and especially in smartphones. 00:01:33.200 --> 00:01:37.120 As those became more mainstream, people bought SD cards to expand their storage 00:01:37.120 --> 00:01:40.560 because cat photos, and the higher the volume 00:01:40.560 --> 00:01:45.960 of SD card sales, the cheaper they were driven, meaning that memory stick was eventually pushed aside 00:01:45.960 --> 00:01:50.920 and even Sony started selling cameras with SD support in 2010. 00:01:50.920 --> 00:01:55.840 Next up is iOmega's zip disk, which was quite different from the memory stick 00:01:55.880 --> 00:02:00.400 in that it served a purpose other than just lining someone's pockets. 00:02:00.400 --> 00:02:04.000 The thing looks like a bigger, chunkier floppy diskette, 00:02:04.000 --> 00:02:07.040 which might lead you to think that it was like a floppy 00:02:07.040 --> 00:02:11.520 that held more data, which actually is precisely what it was. 00:02:11.520 --> 00:02:16.160 Instead of a 1.44 megabyte disk that spun at 300 RPM, 00:02:16.160 --> 00:02:19.920 the original zip disk held 100 megabytes 00:02:19.920 --> 00:02:24.320 and spun at nearly 3000 RPM for faster data transfers. 00:02:24.360 --> 00:02:29.360 And we also got 250 and 750 megabyte variants later. 00:02:29.360 --> 00:02:33.640 The zip disk also came out at a pretty sensible time, 1994, 00:02:33.640 --> 00:02:38.720 when it was becoming very common for folks to work with files much larger than what a floppy could hold, 00:02:38.720 --> 00:02:44.120 but there wasn't a good alternative yet. This led to the zip disk enjoying a burst of popularity 00:02:44.120 --> 00:02:48.640 through the mid 1990s to the point where quite a few pre-built PCs actually came 00:02:48.640 --> 00:02:52.160 with internal zip drives, especially PowerMax, 00:02:52.200 --> 00:02:56.440 helping zip become a very popular format with graphic designers. 00:02:56.440 --> 00:02:59.720 But despite zip disks, undeniable utility, 00:02:59.720 --> 00:03:06.400 and support for several different interfaces, sales entered a terminal decline in 1999. 00:03:06.400 --> 00:03:09.680 This was when recordable and rewritable CDs 00:03:09.680 --> 00:03:14.080 were hitting the mainstream, and blank CDs and burners were much cheaper 00:03:14.080 --> 00:03:19.000 than the proprietary zip equipment that only one company made. 00:03:19.000 --> 00:03:22.960 Not to mention the notorious click of death that destroyed your data. 00:03:25.400 --> 00:03:29.600 Yeah, so they discontinued zip in 2003. 00:03:29.600 --> 00:03:35.080 Finally, here's something from way back that has a surprising parallel to modern DRM, 00:03:35.080 --> 00:03:39.620 Cartrevision. This was the original movie rental format, 00:03:39.620 --> 00:03:46.800 and having debuted in 1972, it actually predated both VHS and Betamax. 00:03:46.800 --> 00:03:50.720 Unfortunately, Cartrevision sucked, big time. 00:03:50.720 --> 00:03:56.440 For starters, you couldn't buy a separate VCR-like player for it and hook it up to your TV. 00:03:56.440 --> 00:03:59.520 You actually had to buy a combination TV 00:03:59.520 --> 00:04:05.160 with the player built in, which originally sold for $1350. 00:04:05.160 --> 00:04:09.040 That's equivalent to nearly $10,000 today. 00:04:09.040 --> 00:04:13.800 And yet, you didn't even get a particularly good rental or watching experience. 00:04:13.800 --> 00:04:19.160 Not only was the video quality notoriously bad due to space constraints on the cartridges, 00:04:19.200 --> 00:04:24.440 but if you wanted to rent a movie, you had to go to a store and order it from a catalog, 00:04:24.440 --> 00:04:27.800 then go home and wait for the title that you requested 00:04:27.800 --> 00:04:31.160 to arrive by mail. What kind of instant gratification is that? 00:04:31.160 --> 00:04:36.440 It's like a less convenient version of Netflix's original DVD delivery service. 00:04:36.440 --> 00:04:40.040 These rental cartridges also had an imperiating limitation. 00:04:40.040 --> 00:04:44.080 You couldn't rewind them. Similar to how modern digital rentals 00:04:44.080 --> 00:04:48.520 and forced viewing limits, this was a method to ensure that you could only watch 00:04:48.560 --> 00:04:51.800 a movie one time before you returned it to the store, 00:04:51.800 --> 00:04:56.560 where they had a special machine that could rewind the tape for the next sucker, excuse me. 00:04:56.560 --> 00:05:02.160 I mean, viewer. And to top it all off, the cartridges themselves were notoriously fragile. 00:05:02.160 --> 00:05:07.360 If you left them someplace that was a little too humid, they would disintegrate in a matter of months. 00:05:07.360 --> 00:05:10.720 So it's not all that surprising that cartridge vision 00:05:10.720 --> 00:05:14.880 was discontinued after only 13 months. 00:05:14.880 --> 00:05:18.320 Are there any other tech failures from yesteryear that you'd like us to explore? 00:05:18.360 --> 00:05:24.840 Let us know down in the comments and we may store your choices in a future episode. 00:05:24.960 --> 00:05:26.960 Get it? Cause this was all storage stuff.