The Phone that 'Inspired' Apple

Before the iPod, there was the Creative NOMAD Jukebox. In September 2000, a Singaporean technology company released a $499 portable music player that could hold six gigabytes of music. It was bulky, slow and ran on four AA batteries. But it could carry an entire music collection in your pocket. Four months later, Steve Jobs reportedly visited Creative's booth at Macworld and began praising the device. According to a later federal lawsuit, Apple wanted Creative to build a smaller version. The two companies discussed working together. Creative turned down the proposed deals. Nine months later, Apple unveiled the iPod. Within a few years, Creative was fighting a war it couldn't win. Its founder pledged $100 million to defeat Apple, its profits collapsed, and the two companies ended up in court over a patent covering one of the iPod's most basic features. In 2006, Apple paid Creative $100 million to settle the dispute. But by then, the battle for portable music was effectively over. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📚 ORDER MY NEW BOOK "History Written by Losers" — out now! The true story of global power has been whitewashed by the victors and the fixers. This book tells the side of history they tried to bury. 👉 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GP9TKPBH ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 💾 IN THIS EPISODE We tell the story of Creative Technology, the Singaporean company that helped revolutionize PC audio, built one of the world's first successful hard-drive MP3 players, and came remarkably close to working with Steve Jobs before Apple launched the iPod. We begin with Sim Wong Hoo, an entrepreneur who started a computer repair business in a Singapore shopping centre in 1981. His early computers failed, but their audio technology became the foundation of the Sound Blaster — the sound card that transformed PC gaming and made Creative a global technology company. Then came the NOMAD Jukebox. Launched in September 2000, the Jukebox could store thousands of songs at a time when most portable players held barely an hour of music. It became America's best-selling digital audio player by revenue, despite its enormous size, painfully slow USB connection and complicated menus. In January 2001, Steve Jobs encountered the device at Macworld. Creative would later allege that Apple proposed a partnership, discussed licensing its technology, and explored investing in a separate portable music business. Creative refused the deals. Its founder, Sim Wong Hoo, wasn't present for the crucial meeting — something he would regret years later. Meanwhile, Apple's hardware chief discovered a tiny Toshiba hard drive that made a much smaller music player possible. In October 2001, Apple introduced the iPod. We follow the battle that came next, as Creative launched increasingly sophisticated players, including the popular Zen Micro, while Apple built an entire ecosystem around iTunes, the Music Store and its iconic advertising. By 2004, Apple dominated the American hard-drive music player market. But Creative wasn't ready to surrender. Sim declared a $100 million marketing war against the iPod and promised to take 40% of the global market. Instead, Apple introduced the iPod Shuffle and Nano, while falling flash memory prices helped push Creative into a devastating $114 million quarterly loss. Then Creative turned to its patents. The company had patented a system for navigating music through artists, albums and tracks — a hierarchy that also appeared on Apple's devices. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🔗 LINKS & SUPPORT 📚 The book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GP9TKPBH 📺 Documentary channel: https://youtube.com/@thatjasonhassett 🔔 Subscribe for weekly stories about forgotten technology, failed products, brilliant ideas and the strange decisions that shaped the devices we use today. #CreativeTechnology #iPod #Apple #SteveJobs #CreativeNOMAD #SoundBlaster #MP3Player #TechHistory #RetroTech #BaldSilicon

For ten years, Apple tried to build a car.Not just an electric car.At different points, it wanted a self-driving pod with no steering wheel or pedals, a futuristic minivan with a private-jet-style interior, and an autonomous vehicle that could call an Apple command centre if it got stuck.The project was called Titan.Apple reportedly spent around $10 billion on it, hired engineers from Tesla, Mercedes and Lamborghini, built its own autonomous driving technology, designed a powerful custom chip, and even bought a 5,500-acre proving ground in the Arizona desert.Then, in February 2024, Apple gathered roughly 2,000 employees into a meeting.Twelve minutes later, the Apple Car was dead.But the strangest part of Project Titan isn’t simply that Apple failed to build a car.It’s that for almost a decade, Apple could never seem to decide what kind of car it was actually trying to build.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━📚 ORDER MY NEW BOOK "History Written by Losers" — out now!The true story of global power has been whitewashed by the victors and the fixers. This book tells the side of history they tried to bury.👉 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GP9TKPBH━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━💾 IN THIS EPISODEWe look at the complete story of Apple’s secretive Project Titan — from Steve Jobs discussing cars with Tony Fadell in 2008, to Tim Cook finally approving a dedicated car project in 2014.We follow Apple as it hires hundreds of automotive engineers, considers buying Tesla, talks with Mercedes-Benz, and begins developing what was initially supposed to be an electric rival to Tesla.Then the project starts changing.Apple abandons the car itself to focus on autonomous driving. It tests fleets of sensor-covered Lexus SUVs, experiments with self-driving Volkswagen vans, and eventually returns to designing its own vehicle.That leads to some of Project Titan’s strangest concepts.There was the “Bread Loaf” — a white autonomous minivan with an all-glass roof, private-jet-style seating, a huge display, no steering wheel and no pedals.Later came an even stranger pod with curved glass gull-wing doors and automatic cargo ramps, nicknamed the “I-Beam.”We also look at why Apple struggled to find an automaker willing to actually manufacture the car, including talks with Hyundai, Kia and Nissan, and why the company’s insistence on controlling the product created a problem that its iPhone manufacturing model couldn’t easily solve.Finally, we follow Project Titan through its last years as Apple repeatedly scales back its ambitions — from full Level 5 autonomy, to highway self-driving, to ordinary driver assistance — until the car planned for 2028 looked surprisingly similar to the Tesla rival Apple had originally considered building years earlier.Five weeks later, Apple cancelled it.And in 2026, the Arizona proving ground Apple bought to develop a driverless car was sold to Waymo.The cars driving around it today really don’t have drivers.They just aren’t Apple’s.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━🔗 LINKS & SUPPORT📚 The book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GP9TKPBH📺 Documentary channel: https://youtube.com/@thatjasonhassett🔔 Subscribe for weekly stories about forgotten technology, failed products, brilliant ideas and the strange decisions that shaped the devices we use today.#AppleCar #ProjectTitan #Apple #TechHistory #JonyIve #TimCook #Tesla #SelfDrivingCars #AutonomousCars #Waymo #BaldSilicon

For a few years in the 2000s, people didn’t say “satnav.”They said TomTom.The Dutch company became one of Europe’s biggest technology success stories, selling millions of little navigation boxes that stuck to windscreens and told drivers exactly where to go.Then, at the height of its success, TomTom made a huge bet.In 2007 it agreed to pay €2.9 billion for Tele Atlas — the company that made the digital maps inside its devices.Most of the money was borrowed.Within little more than a year, around 90% of TomTom’s stock market value had disappeared.But the strange part is that the product itself was still selling.What really destroyed TomTom’s consumer empire wasn’t one bad gadget or one obvious mistake.It was the arrival of a world where navigation stopped being a product people paid for — and became a free feature inside the phone already in their pocket.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━📚 ORDER MY NEW BOOK "History Written by Losers" — out now!The true story of global power has been whitewashed by the victors and the fixers. This book tells the side of history they tried to bury.👉 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GP9TKPBH━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━💾 IN THIS EPISODEWe look at how TomTom grew from a small Dutch software company building programs for Psion handheld computers into one of the most recognisable technology brands in Europe.We follow the creation of the original TomTom GO, the explosion of dedicated GPS navigation, and the decision to spend €2.9 billion buying digital mapmaker Tele Atlas just as Garmin, Nokia and Google were fighting for control of the mapping industry.Then everything changes.Apple puts GPS into the iPhone. Google builds its own maps and launches free turn-by-turn navigation on Android. Nokia makes navigation free too. Suddenly the business TomTom had built around selling directions was competing against companies willing to give those directions away.We also look at TomTom’s attempts to survive — navigation apps, factory-fitted car systems, GPS watches, action cameras and live traffic — before the company eventually retreated from consumer hardware almost entirely.And finally, we look at what TomTom became instead: a mapping and automotive technology company quietly supplying navigation data behind the scenes, even as the TomTom name disappeared from the dashboard.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━🔗 LINKS & SUPPORT📚 The book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GP9TKPBH📺 Documentary channel: https://youtube.com/@thatjasonhassett🔔 Subscribe for weekly stories about forgotten technology, failed products, brilliant ideas and the strange decisions that shaped the devices we use today.#TomTom #GPS #SatNav #TechHistory #RetroTech #GoogleMaps #Garmin #iPhone #Navigation #TeleAtlas #BaldSilicon

In August 2016, Samsung released what looked like the best phone it had ever made.A curved display. An iris scanner. Waterproofing. A bigger battery. A built-in S Pen. And reviews calling it one of the finest smartphones ever produced.Then they started catching fire.The Galaxy Note7 had been designed to go directly after the iPhone 7, launching four weeks before Apple’s new flagship and giving Samsung a crucial head start.Instead, within just fourteen days, Samsung was recalling 2.5 million phones around the world.The company thought it knew what had gone wrong.It didn’t.Samsung identified a defect in batteries made by its own SDI division and replaced affected phones with new units using batteries from another supplier, ATL.Replacement devices were marked with a green battery icon — Samsung’s visual promise that these phones were safe.Then the replacement phones started burning too.And the reason was completely different.Two battery suppliers.Two unrelated defects.One of the biggest product disasters in technology history.By October 2016, American carriers had stopped selling the Note7, airlines were warning passengers about it at the gate, and the US government had banned the phone from aircraft entirely.Fifty-four days after launch, Samsung killed it.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━📚 ORDER MY NEW BOOK "History Written by Losers" — out now!The true story of global power has been whitewashed by the victors and the fixers. This book tells the side of history they tried to bury.👉 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GP9TKPBH━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━💾 IN THIS EPISODEWe trace the Galaxy Note7 from Samsung’s decision to skip the Note 6 entirely and launch its new flagship weeks ahead of Apple’s iPhone 7, through the extraordinary reviews and record-breaking pre-orders that initially made the phone look like a huge success.Then we follow the first reports of burned Note7s, Samsung’s investigation into batteries produced by Samsung SDI, and the tiny internal defect that allowed electrodes inside the cells to short and enter thermal runaway.We look at Samsung’s decision to recall roughly 2.5 million phones just fourteen days after launch, its choice to handle the recall itself before US regulators stepped in, and the enormous logistical challenge of replacing millions of devices in a matter of weeks.Then there’s the green battery icon — the unusual software change Samsung used to identify replacement phones and reassure customers, airlines and retailers that the new devices were safe.They weren’t.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━🔗 LINKS & SUPPORT📚 The book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GP9TKPBH📺 Documentary channel: https://youtube.com/@thatjasonhassett🔔 Subscribe for weekly stories about forgotten technology, failed products, brilliant ideas and the strange decisions that shaped the devices we use today.#Samsung #GalaxyNote7 #Note7 #SamsungGalaxy #Android #RetroTech #TechHistory #Smartphones #BaldSilicon

In 2020, Microsoft released one of the strangest phones ever made.Two ultra-thin screens. A 360-degree hinge. No folding display. No outer screen. And a price of $1,399.It was called the Surface Duo.Microsoft insisted it wasn’t really a phone. It was a new kind of Surface — a pocket-sized productivity device built around running two full apps side by side.And buried inside it was an idea Microsoft had been chasing for more than a decade.The story begins with Courier: a secret dual-screen tablet designed by the team behind Xbox, killed before it ever reached the public. Years later, after the collapse of Windows Phone and Microsoft’s disastrous Nokia acquisition, that same basic concept returned under a new codename: Andromeda.This time, Microsoft actually built it.But when its ambitious Windows operating system fell apart, Microsoft made a decision that would once have been almost unthinkable:Keep the Surface hardware.Throw away Windows.And put Android on it.The result was beautiful, fascinating — and deeply flawed.Buggy software. An outdated processor. No 5G. No NFC. No wireless charging. One mediocre camera. A $1,399 price tag.Within ten months, brand-new Surface Duos were selling for just $409.Microsoft tried again with the Duo 2, fixing almost every major hardware complaint.Then it stopped.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━📚 ORDER MY NEW BOOK "History Written by Losers" — out now!The true story of global power has been whitewashed by the victors and the fixers. This book tells the side of history they tried to bury.👉 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GP9TKPBH━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━💾 IN THIS EPISODEWe trace the Surface Duo all the way back to Microsoft Research, the experimental Codex project, and J Allard’s legendary Courier tablet — a dual-screen digital notebook that Microsoft cancelled just as Apple launched the iPad.Then we follow Microsoft through the collapse of Windows Phone, the $7.6 billion Nokia write-down, and the creation of Project Andromeda: a pocketable Surface designed around two displays, a stylus, and a radically simplified version of Windows.When the software strategy failed, Panos Panay made the extraordinary proposal to keep the hardware and run Google’s Android instead.We look at why that decision left the first Surface Duo launching with aging hardware, missing features and an Android experience Microsoft was still learning how to build.Then there’s the device itself — the extraordinary 360-degree hinge, the two 4:3 displays, app pairing, the software bugs, disastrous reviews, collapsing price, and the small community of people who discovered that when the Duo actually worked, there was genuinely nothing else quite like it.We also follow the Surface Duo 2, Microsoft’s abandoned third-generation model, the company’s brief pivot toward a conventional foldable, Panos Panay’s departure, and the quiet death of the entire Surface Duo line.Finally, we look at what survived.Because although Microsoft abandoned the hardware, some of the software work created for the Surface Duo ended up inside Android itself — helping modern foldable phones understand where their screens bend and how apps should react.The Surface Duo failed.But part of it is now inside almost every Android foldable that followed.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━🔗 LINKS & SUPPORT📚 The book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GP9TKPBH📺 Documentary channel: https://youtube.com/@thatjasonhassett🔔 Subscribe for weekly stories about forgotten technology, failed products, brilliant ideas and the strange decisions that shaped the devices we use today.#Microsoft #SurfaceDuo #Surface #WindowsPhone #Android #RetroTech #TechHistory #PanosPanay #FoldablePhone #BaldSilicon