About a year ago I miscalculated — badly — on the Microsoft Kinect. In terms of speed of adoption, only Apple's iPad has rivaled the Kinect. Aside from some tough comments on my blog, the long-term repercussions were low. That's pretty much what happens to a pundit who gets it wrong — nothing.
And this:
The non-user. This pundit makes bold predictions about a product or service he's never used. Remember, a wide gulf separates a corporate press release or a carefully scripted demo and in-the-field reality. I ran into this trap when I started getting excited about Research in Motion's Playbookbefore the product had even been officially launched. The product's performance didn't live up to early press releases and has struggled in the market.
Finally, this:
The freeze framer. Back in 2005 I wrote a piece [PDF] looking at a new video recorder introduced by Pure Digital Technologies, the Flip. I said the simple, easy-to-use product had one fatal flaw — customers had to drop it off at drugstores to get videos processed. How many would do that, I wondered? The mistake I made was assuming that Pure wasn't already working on its second version, which featured a simple mechanism to load video onto computers. The company took off and was ultimately acquired by Cisco for hundreds of millions of dollars. (Cisco strangely shut down Pure Digital this year, but that's a different story.) Markets are dynamic, and if pundits don't take the long view they can make mistakes.
How cool is it that Anthony is comfortable enough in his own skin to base a blog post on his bad predictions?
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