Few people have heard of it, yet many consider John Blankenbaker's KENBAK-1 to be the first commercial personal computer.
Apple QuickTake 100 Digital Camera
By James Grahame
Apple is not a brand most people associate with photographic equipment, but that didn't stop them from entering the digital camera market with the QuickTake 100 in early 1994. This 1 lb (454g) binocular-shaped digicam was designed in cooperation with Kodak and Chinon and included 1MB of flash memory that could hold eight "high resolution" 640x480 color images.
It was powered by three rechargable AA batteries and included a Macintosh-only interface cable. The viewfinder was optical; the built-in LCD screen was for status information only. With a list price of almost $750, Apple found it extremely hard to compete with established camera brands like Canon and Sony. The PC-friendly QuickTake 150 was released in 1995 and a more camera-like QuickTake 200 (manufactured by Fuji) was released in 1997. Steve Jobs killed the QuickTake product line (along with other quirky products like the Newton MessagePad) when he returned to the company in 1997.
I suspect there's a thriving underground cult of QuickTake users, but I've yet to stumble upon their lair.
