Aug 26: Why the Apple Pippin Was More Like Apple's Kukoc
Plus how a desire for trained beavers killed a Simpsons live-action spinoff
The ‘80s & ‘90s pop culture you loved, forgot, or never knew existed
August 26th, 2022 • Issue 114
Why the Apple Pippin Was More Like Apple's Kukoc
26 years ago, on September 1st, 1996, Apple’s video game system, Pippin, was released.
Apple Arcade, a service for which I see nearly nonstop ads, is not Apple’s first attempt at breaking into the world of video games.
No, that first attempt came in 1996 with the Apple Pippin — when Apple teamed up with the Japanese company Bandai to create a full gaming console/multimedia device.
Today, the Pippin is known as a first-ballot hall-of-famer for “Apple’s failures” — nestled snugly alongside the Newton handheld, mandatory U2 downloads, and the decision to spend half-a-decade selling computers with keyboards that couldn’t type.
And yes, the Pippin was a failure — the last failure before Steve Jobs returned to the company, in fact. It sold a mere ~42,000 units and was discontinued within a year.
But Pippin wasn’t all bad. In some ways, it was a device that existed too early — without the feature set to deliver on the vision.
The Pippin wasn’t like the competing video game consoles of the era (most notably Nintendo 64, Sega Saturn, and Sony PlayStation). Pippin was a lower-powered Macintosh computer you could plug into your TV. And you could use it for more than video games — in theory, it could also be your stereo, your entertainment center, your web browser, a telephone, maybe even a video conferencing platform.
Unfortunately, the technology wasn’t ready for any of those things. Even including video games.
The system was underpowered. The design was ugly. The controller had an awkward trackball. There were barely any games; third-party developers weren’t particularly interested. People weren’t ready to turn their TVs into stereos or computer-driven entertainment centers or phones — and the home internet options at the time weren’t close to ready to support any of that.
Plus, it cost $599, an astronomical price compared to the other video game consoles of the era. (That was double the PlayStation and triple the N64.)
But… while the Pippin flopped, you can see its fingerprints on Apple’s business decisions going forward.
They learned if you enter a market late and want to charge an ultra-premium price, you’ve got to deliver a product that looks and performs both different and better than anything else out there.
They learned that you need to lock down third-party developers for your platform and make it the go-to place for them to sell, not an afterthought.
They learned you can tell people it’s time to make a technological leap (say, by removing the disk drive from a computer or removing the headphone jack from a phone) — but you can’t push people too far to the future or you’ll lose them.
Did they learn all of that exclusively from the Pippin? Definitely not. Did it contribute to their ultimately trillion-dollar strategy going forward? Definitely.
So as for the headline of this article…
The Apple Pippin was not named after Scottie Pippin. It was named after the Newtown Pippin, known for being a “versatile” apple (eat it, cook with it, make cider from it, and so on). And the Pippin was a “versatile” platform.
The Chicago Bulls were amidst their second championship dynasty when the Apple Pippin came out. Scottie Pippen was, famously, Michael Jordan’s #2. Nothing about him is particularly analogous to the Pippin. But another member of those Chicago Bulls teams is. And that’s Toni Kukoc, a Croatian basketball player who was one of the first real “European-style” basketball players to come to the NBA.
Apple Pippin was conceptually ahead of its time; technology wasn’t ready for an internet-powered multimedia computer attached to your TV. Kukoc was ahead of his time as well; the mid ‘90s NBA game was rough and physical, not made for his European skillset (a tall guy with ballhandling, passing, and shooting talent) that thrived in a more open style of basketball.
Once technology caught up, the world was ready for devices like Pippin. PlayStations now act as people’s TV hubs. All of our TVs are “smart.” The dividing lines between computers, video game consoles, and TVs are now blurred if not gone.
Once the game of basketball opened up, it was ready for the influx of players with Kukoc’s skills (and who had an even better, next generation version of those skills) — the Dirk Nowitzkis, Giannis Antetokounmpos, Luka Doncics, Nikola Jokics, and so on.
The Pippin wasn’t Pippen, it was Kukoc.
Anyhoo, someone remind me down the road to write about why Crystal Pepsi is more like Daniel Stern than Billy Crystal.
Other momentous moments from this week in the ‘80s and ‘90s
August 26th
1994 - Natural Born Killers hit theaters.
1996 - 7th Heaven debuted on the WB.
1997 - Mariah Carey’s single Honey was released.
1997 - Creed’s debut album My Own Prison was released.
1999 - WWF Smackdown premiered.
August 27th
1988 - George Michael’s single Monkey hit number one.
1990 - SummerSlam ‘90 featured the Ultimate Warrior defeating Rick Rude in the main event.
1990 - Garth Brooks’ second album, No Fences, was released.
1991 - Pearl Jam’s album Ten was released.
1992 - Martin premiered on FOX.
1992 - The Heights premiered on FOX.
1993 - Japan’s Rainbow Bridge was completed.
1994 - Boyz II Men’s single I’ll Make Love to You hit number one and would stay there through early December.
1996 - 112’s self-titled album was released.
August 28th
1989 - SummerSlam ‘89 aired live on pay-per-view.
1996 - Prince Charles and Princess Diana divorced.
1997 - Genesis’s first album in six years premiered live on a webcast.
1999 - Tal Bachman’s one hit, She’s So High, peaked at number 14.
August 29th
1984 - Prince’s single Let’s Go Crazy/Erotic City was released.
1987 - Los Lobos’ single La Bamba hit number one.
1989 - TurboGrafx 16 was released in North America.
1992 - SummerSlam ‘92 was recorded at Wembley Stadium in England.
1993 - Living Single premiered on FOX.
1994 - Luther Vandross and Mariah Carey’s cover of Endless Love was released.
1994 - Oasis’s debut album, Definitely Maybe, was released in the U.K.
1995 - Blues Traveler’s single Hook was released.
1996 - Isaac Hayes objected to Bob Dole using a parody of Soul Man that said “I’m a Dole man.”
1997 - A company called Kibble — that would soon be renamed Netflix — was founded.
August 30th
1980 - Christopher Cross’s single Sailing hit number one.
1982 - The term “email” was copyrighted by a 16-year-old.
1983 - Guion Bluford became the first Black astronaut.
1984 - The space shuttle Discovery launched.
1986 - Steve Winwood’s single Higher Love hit number one.
1994 - Usher’s self-titled debut album was released.
1996 - The Crow: City of Angels hit theaters.
1997 - Sister Hazel’s one hit, All For You, peaked at number 11.
1997 - The Houston Comets defeated the New York Liberty to win the first WNBA championship.
August 31st
1987 - Michael Jackson’s album Bad was released.
1990 - Ken Griffey Sr. and Ken Griffey Jr. became the first father-son pair to play on the same MLB team.
1991 - 3rd Bass’s one hit, Pop Goes the Weasel, peaked at number 29.
1991 - Metallica’s self-titled album hit number one.
1993 - Mariah Carey’s album Music Box was released.
1994 - Milk Money hit theaters.
1994 - 20 Fingers’ novelty song Short D* Man was released.
1999 - The Dixie Chicks album Fly was released.
September 1st
1984 - Tina Turner’s single What’s Love Got to Do with It hit number one.
1985 - The remains of the Titanic were discovered.
1987 - Stadium Events, the rarest of all the games for the original Nintendo Entertainment System, was released.
1988 - Hudson’s Adventure Island was released for NES.
1990 - Luther Vandross’s single Here and Now was released, as was Stevie B’s single Because I Love You.
1991 - E! News premiered.
1994 - The Head premiered on MTV.
1994 - The Independent Film Channel debuted.
1997 - The Disney Channel went from a paid channel to part of regular cable.
1998 - Harry Potter & the Sorcerer’s Stone was released in the U.S.
1999 - Outside Providence hit theaters.
5 ‘80s and ‘90s trivia facts
There was almost a live-action Simpsons series in 1994.
In the early days of The Simpsons, Matt Groening worked on a live-action spinoff series about Krusty the Clown. It fell through — with one main reason being an untenable budget. The pilot featured a large number of either trained beavers or realistic mechanical ones — and that would’ve cost too much money.
It took 25 years for Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You to become a number one hit.
The song came out in October of 1994. It hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in December of 2019.
Two of Disney’s ‘90s animated classics were animated in North Korea.
Parts of both The Lion King and Pocahontas were animated by a studio in North Korea.
Tom Hanks did not look like the Forrest Gump from the source novels.
In Winston Groom’s original novel of Forrest Gump, Forrest was 6-foot-6 and over 240 pounds. Groom pictured John Goodman playing him if there was ever a movie. But Tom Hanks was the biggest star of the moment… so he became Forrest Gump. (He also wouldn’t match the book’s character description when he starred in The Da Vinci Code movie many years later.)
Shredder from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles almost had a much less cool name.
The villain’s original name was going to be The Grater or Grate Man — because the tools on his arms looked like massive cheese graters.
Everything old is new again
A look at the reboots, revivals, throwbacks, retro insights, and nostalgia in the news
This is great: Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation video can make older computers crash. There’s a specific frequency in the song that aligns with one of the frequencies of some older hard drives, causing them to crash. Even if you just play the music video near one of the older computers it could go down.
A Ferris Bueller’s Day Off spin-off is in the works and will focus on… the valet guys who took Cameron’s dad’s car for a joyride.
An Ally McBeal sequel series is in the works at ABC with Calista Flockhart.
It appears the Buffy the Vampire Slayer reboot is off.
Assuming Warner Bros. Discovery doesn’t kill it as part of their ongoing serial killing spree, the sequel to A Christmas Story, called A Christmas Story Christmas, will come out on HBO Max on November 17th.
The new Warner Bros. Discovery isn’t killing the House Party reboot after all — but it will go to theaters rather than straight to HBO Max. It’s scheduled for December 9th.
The trailer is out for the Fletch reboot, called Confess, Fletch, with Jon Hamm.
Wayne Knight, who played Newman on Seinfeld, says the show’s finale “didn’t quite land in the way that they wanted.”
Joe E. Tata, who played Nat, the owner of the Peach Pit on Beverly Hills, 90210, passed away this week at age 85.
Recommendations of the week
The ‘80s & ‘90s pop culture you loved
In honor of the 40th anniversary of Tron, here’s a retrospective on how Tron changed sci-fi movies forever. (Despite being considered a failure at the time.)
The ‘80s & ‘90s pop culture you forgot
The Pogo Bal. Impossible to master… not that much fun if you did. But damn if every kid either had this or their best friend did.
The ‘80s & ‘90s pop culture you never knew existed
28 years after Super Punch-Out!! was released for Super Nintendo, someone discovered a hidden two-player mode. Where the second player can play as all the comically oversized opponents. You either die a hero or live long enough to become Bald Bull.
Have a great week!
-Sam