Cult of Mac on QTVR: What Happened?

WIRED Blogs: Cult of Mac

QuickTime VR hit in the mid-'90s, and it was strictly a novelty for a few years. It was good at rotating 3-D visuals of new Apple products, and that's about it. The technology got better and better over time, but Apple never found the killer app for the technology. It stayed with interior design tours and product glamour shots.

Stuff like the Airbus cabin is nice, but people spend hours on Google Earth, scouring the globe and leaving tags, and the visual quality is not as good as what Apple could do here if they wanted to. A lot of the time, I think that the death of Apple's R&D group was one of the most important steps in Apple's recovery. But there are times where I truly do mourn what was lost in the process. Apple is brilliant at finding new business models these days, but there was an era when they really pushed us forward on the technology front, not just on interface and platform.

QuickTime VR should have been a contender.

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