It seemed like only yesterday when SyQuest was the king of
removable media. In those days graphic artists and other people who worked with
large files relied on their SyQuest 44 MB or 88 MB cartridges to move their
files between their studios and printer shop. It was a love & hate
relationship with SyQuestis near monopoly on “low-cost”
removable media. As for everyday users, we were in the world of the floppy
disk. (For you new Mac users, a Floppy disk was 3.5 inches and held 1.4 MB of
data.)
Then one day, the removable market was changed forever; a
scrappy second-tier company introduced the now famous Zip Disk. Suddenly the
market had an inexpensive technology that was well designed and brought a
massive 100 MB of storage to anyoneis desktop. SyQuest saw their
leadership role disappear over-night. Their attempt at a Zip-killer, the
EZ-Drive had a few merits but the writing was on the wall. SyQuest would become
just another chapter in the computer history wall of fame. (Or is that shame?)
Things looked well for Iomega as countless users adopted the Zip Disk format.
However, they soon faced some serious issues. Quality of manufacturing and the
“Click-of-Death” was mentioned on almost every computer web site.
This brought some class-action suits but Iomega somehow managed to survive and
thrive.
Of course other media companies were not satisfied with
allowing Iomega such a huge market share and so many companies introduced their
solution. Magnetic-Optical (MO), which holds the largest market share in Japan,
was introduced by several vendors. MO media comes in several formats (128 MB,
230MB, and two over 1 GB), but in the past suffered from low access speeds.
Some of the newer drives boast fast access speeds and even FireWire interfaces.
The main advantage of this format is the shelf life. Some researches claim this
is the best format for long-term archives. Matsushita (Panasonic) and Sony also
tried their hand at removable media. Sonyis DataMan seemed like a good
idea at first, but they quietly killed it when no one paid any attention to it.
Some Sony engineers are still trying to push this format forward with higher
capacities. Matsushita introduced the PD format. PD? Right, letis move
along.
In the last two years some start-ups and established media
companies have introduced some other formats, however they have had little
success in capturing large market share. Iomega also tried to expand on their
Zip Disk success with a 250 MB version as well with their Jazz and Click-disk
series. Of course, some users have found success and value in the alternative
formats but the 100 MB Zip Disk remains the standard.
If any company had more of an effect on media in the history
of computers it must be Apple. They werenit the first to use the 3.5
drive, or the CD-ROM, but their use of these formats pushed the industry along.
When Apple introduced the iMac without a floppy disk, companies scrambled to
introduce a solution. USB-based floppy disks were “re-introduced”
almost at the same price as a Zip Drive. Other companies introduced
high-capacity floppy-type media but consumers on a whole, have ignored them.
More recently, Panasonic has announced a super-density floppy-type format.
You must be thinking he is forgetting “my media of
choice, the CD-R/RW.” Actually, I left that for last. This media has done
the most to decrease the Zip Diskis hold on the removable media market.
Not only do you get 650 MB of storage, but the cost per media is extremely low.
Couple this with the fact that the drives have come way down, they can be used
for other projects (music, making coasters, etc.) and they can be found
everywhere, this is the format that is doing an “Iomega to Iomega.”
There is another factor we have to consider, the Internet.
As more users have access to broadband Internet, it has become easier to
transfer that 200 MB DTP job to the print shopis server.
I took a step back from my computer desk for a moment and
analyzed the situation. Thereis a box of 100 or so blank floppies that is
collecting dust. They refuse to die, and I refuse to throw them out despite my
wifeis pleading. Next to those floppies are about 70 Zip Disks. There are
so handy that I fill them up in minutes, but Iim starting to feel like I
did back in the pre-Zip days. Next to my Zip disk collection I have about 40 CD
(R)s that make me wonder when they will no longer be readable by my CD drive.
Letis get back to Zip Disks. Although I live in the
land of MOs (they are very cheap and plentiful here) I can always find blank
Zip media. About two years ago I remember paying about $12 a Zip Disk. The
price went down to about $9 a disk as they became popular in Japan. To my
horror, the last time I checked they were up to $18 a disk. I must be in the
wrong store I thought, so I tried a few more computer stores and sure enough
Zip media price has doubled in my town. (I live in a ismalli
Japanese city of only 300,000 people so Tokyo prices may differ.) By the way,
when I say price rise I mean every media company (Iomega, Fuji, etc.) and
format (PC/Mac) was higher.
I was going to buy my wife a USB Zip Disk for her iMac, but
I think even a slow USB CD-R/RW would be better after my shock from the
Zipis media price rise. Appleis shift from DVD-ROM to the new
drives in the G4s also should be an indicator to “stock up on the Zip
media now.” Actually, I donit see the media disappearing over night
as there are so many drives out in the world, but I think Iomega should be ready
to move its business quickly lest it become another SyQuest.
It will be interesting to watch how Appleis (ok, soon
the rest of the PC industry) new drives will alter the media landscape. We
should also keep an eye on solid-state storage devices such as the Sony Memory
Stick, Smart-Media, and Flash Media.
Carlos Camacho is Editor-in-Chief of the web site iDevGames
(http://www.idevgames.com) which is
devoted to the design and development of Macintosh games.