Apple

Apple has had a long string of successes in its 36 years of existence, from their powerhouse Mac products to the latest shiny white gadget with an ‘i’ in front of it. But not everything they produce is a home run — the laughably bulky Macintosh Portable and the Performa series come to mind. And not every failure had to do with computers; in the early 90’s Apple dabbled in all sorts of products, including the ill-fated QuickTake, one of the first consumer digital cameras to hit stores.

 The “hand-held” digital camera that looks more like a projector. 

The QuickTake 100 debuted in 1994, the glorious year Netscape Navigator was first released and when Ace of Base’s “The Sign” topped the music charts. It’s as old as Justin Bieber (and arguably more useful). This digital behemoth could store a whopping eight photos at 640×480 resolution (or 32 photos at 320×240 res) in glorious 24-bit color. Although it lacked focus or zoom controls, individual image deletion options, or image preview capabilities, it did have a built-in flash.

We recently came across an old thread containing some photos taken with the QuickTake 150 model. The author of the thread likens the images to “watercolour paintings,” and they do indeed look like some sort of funky Photoshop filter:

Looks like a painting you’d pick up at a local flea market.

The price tag for a QuickTake camera in 1994 was $750, which is about $1,130 in today’s dollar if you adjust for inflation. That’s basically around the cost of a 13-inch MacBook Air, which, amusingly, has a much better digital camera built into it.

The subsequent models, namely the QuickTake 150 and QuickTake 200, cost $700 and $650, respectively, but the price drops weren’t enough to save the product line. Poor sales and a lack of traction (consumers were more likely to purchase from photography-centric companies like Kodak and Fujifilm) led to the discontinuance of QuickTake cameras in 1997, following Steve Jobs’ return to the company.

However, given the product’s high nostalgia factor and the hipster-filtered photographs it takes, I fully expect Facebook to buy up any remaining versions of it for roughly $1 billion. (You know, since that’s apparently something Facebook does these days.)

Do you fondly recall the days when Apple dabbled in digital cameras? Or better yet, did you ever own a QuickTake? If so, how ghetto-fabulous was it? And did you have to struggle with deciding whether to lug that monster around or your gigantic car phone, because you couldn’t fit both in your purse or backpack?