Nothing is permanent in this world, especially technology. Last year, when we saw some wonderful innovations that kept us connected to the outside world, we also missed out on a number of products and services from the past.
Some of them were on deathbeds for some time, others slipped to sudden deaths that shocked many. The discontinuation of a product or service should not be seen as a total failure, but rather highlights the market forces at play.
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In a year that has had its highs and lows, we look back at the technology we missed out on in 2021.
LG brought a lot of new things in the smartphone market but gave up earlier this year. A lot of that has to do with the confusing business strategy the Korean company followed for many years.
While it hasn't come as a shock to tech insiders, Apple killing off the original HomePod has always been an issue. The HomePod may not have been a flop, but it wasn't a roaring success either. The problem with the HomePod wasn't its exorbitant price, but its positioning. The HomePod is a great speaker and sounds wonderful, but it's not as smart as competing products from Amazon and Google.
After the original HomePod, another device that was discontinued by Apple was the iMac Pro. When the iMac Pro was released in 2017 it served its purpose at the time, but it had started to feel a little pointless lately. The iMac Pro was an experimental product aimed exclusively at the professional community, but at some point moment, when the Mac Pro arrived two years later, the all-in-one desktop computer lost its purpose.
Earlier this year, Google's parent company, Alphabet, canceled Loon, a high-profile venture aimed at bringing the Internet to people in remote areas of the world.
The Houseparty app is dead. The video app saw a huge boost during the pandemic but was discontinued in October. Houseparty, a video chat service, was launched in 2016 and acquired by Epic Games in 2019.
Periscope, Twitter's live streaming app, went offline earlier this year. It didn't come as a shock to many when Twitter shut down the Periscope app, which many thought was already dead. Periscope was a sensation when it launched, although with the arrival of TikTok and Instagram the app has lost its charm.
