One thing I think is interesting here is we're definitely having this running discussion about Zip in two different contexts. Your last line about ignoring history (I'm going to chuckle about the irony of that) is interesting, because you've got a few things about in-situ late '90s successes of Zip
as a marketed product but you also have some differentcommentary on the practicality of Zip in the '90s and in modern times.
I'm not out to prove that regular people buying Zip drives made a big mistake. I think there's a possibility they could have chosen a better product, but I am also at least a little aware, granted, via back-issues of publications and hindsight analysis from people who were there, that most of why Zip was practical for people was because Iomega strong-armed it into being the only viable choice in a lot of situations. Then, they cashed in by selling the drives at a near loss and selling the media at relatively insane margins.
Other options have always existed, they've always been better, and the value propositions have been different. In a casual or home setting, your neighbor probably doesn't have an MO drive so there are ecosystem reasons for going with Zip in some situations. In a more professional production oriented environment, Zip probably got away with being one of many drives on a given computer or got away with being sold but sitting idle, having mostly been replaced with something a little more realistic to the context. (i.e. someone buys a 9600 that has a Zip in it, but 9600s have like five bays on the front, so their tape, MO, Jaz, or SyJet gets put in the next bay down, or stacked ontop of the machine.)
So, historical issues aside, and you're wrong on several of them, I've included details below, it's worth considering that Zips have a few different problems and they have them at higher frequencies because they were engineered and built cheaply explicitly for the purpose of using a Gillette/razor blade model. Iomega made its money on the sale of Zip disks, not on the sale of Zip drives, which is why at least once below I allude to Iomega having to do some pretty aggressive wheeling and dealing with Apple. My theory here is Apple was receiving the drives almost free and then putting their markup on them, under the speculation that Mac users were
generally relatively power-user kind of people within their own classes and you were a little more likely to net a couple of cartridge sales from someone who bought a Performa 6400 than someone who bought a Packard Bell or an Acer, at the time. (To be honest: This perception, whether or not there's any truth to it, is probably why Apple charges for icloud, rather than ever budging on tossing a couple more gigs to the free usage tier, but that's a different discussion altogether.)
So yeah, even though networking was probably impractical if you owned a single Performa 6400 in 1997, there's no reason most people today wouldn't be able to network their Macs together. Of the Macs that had Zip provided by Apple, the 6400 and 6500 were the only ones without onboard 10-base-T Ethernet. They're the only ones you can't pull out of a shipping box and connect to your ISP provided network gateway and start FTPing files or visiting system7today.com or whatever. And, because those systems have PCI expansion slots and Comm Slot 2 availability, it's not like Ethernet is exactly hard to come by. But even if you've got a 6400 and somehow don't have ethernet for it, you can use something as simple as a single serial cable to transfer files with any other beige Mac.
That's why my thesis is use them,
carefully, if you've got 'em, but there's no reason to go get 'em. And if you look at
completed auctions for Zip equipment on eBay, Zip drives (the ones you'd need to buy for your modern PC/Mac to do the file transfers) are selling for a little more than peanuts. It's almost cheaper to buy a USB floppy drive, a copy of the pro version of Stuffit for your modern computer, and just use stuffit to create archives spanned to 1.4 megs and transfer files that way. It's also almost cheaper to buy a SCSI2SD and an SD card and just mount your Mac volume directly on the desktop of a relatively modern Mac and load files that way. It's a tactic people have used here a couple of times in the past few months.
and all but steamrollered every other removable media option
Magically, almost all of those other technologies except the one (Bernoulli) directly superseded by Zip remained available. Hell, MO technologies were still being made and sold in ~2010, meanwhile the click of death and related problems made Iomega give up on Zip entirely in 2003.
PM6400 came out with the internal Zip option two years after the Zip was all but ubiquitous on PC and Mac as the removable of choice.
The 6400, 6500, and Beige G3 AIO systems, along with maybe, IDK, the 7300 and the original concept of the beige G3 (where it supersedes the 7300 and 8600 and then there's a further 9600 replacement sitting at the top of the product line) all make sense for Zip, because it's on those machines that relatively casual users do things like save web pages to disks, save copies of emails, keep a few old voicemail recordings around, and so on.
On the 9600 and 8600, and on the Power Macs G3 and G4, it doesn't make an awful lot of sense because that whole time the files were growing and those users needed more or everything, by the nature of what they did.
I'm convinced that the main reason the Zip drive makes sense for the 6500/6500
in particular is because Zips were often the only big data cartridge format you could run to Target or Wal-Mart or an office supply store and buy almost anywhere in the US.
CD/RW wasn't introduced until 1997!
But many of the relevant use cases are fine with a WORM drive anyway, especially on CDs where you cann use multi-session to add more files to the disc later on, and especially in some of the cited use cases such as client deliverables, archiving, and delivery to service bureau. As early as either 1994 or 1995, too, there's drives that do both write-once CD-Rs and write-many 650 megabyte phase change media, giving the benefits of both CD-R and (depending on how the phase change media worked) either MO or CD-RW.
Apple intro'd the iMac in 1998 with only SJ's Slotloader CD-ROM. Big mistake, CD-RW prices fell and trayloaders function over form became the norm.
Yeah, actually, the iMac started with a slotloader and I'm pretty sure MCE or a similar company actually built a CD-RW replacement drive for it. The entire concept of the iMac was that eventually Internet-based file transfer (think
iDisk) and ultimately USB flash drives would appear. The iMac, interestingly, is probably the biggest breath of life LS-120 ever got. In 1998 when the iMac was launched, not everyone who got one was already into the zip ecosystem, and a zip drive didn't get you your copy of Word 5 on floppies, but an LS-120 got you your floppies
and access to a superfloppy ecosystem. Plus it was in January of 1998 that people started to see various aspects of Click of Death start to happen.
Apple dropped Zip as an upgrade only when CD-RW had become common when the MDD was released
CD-RW was common a few years earlier than that. I'm interested in whether or not this is documented anywhere, because the thing we have to remember is Apple themselves never built these drives. They never even really
integrated support into their OS. they shipped OS preloads with a few drivers, still written and provided by Iomega, and Iomega themselves built all the drives, and gave Apple the specs for the opening they'd need on the front of the computer.
It's
known that Iomega aggressively pursued OEM deals with computer manufacturers. Imation tried this too with LS-120, but wasn't able to secure such a deal with Apple.
By the time of the Power Macintosh G4 MDD, CD-RW had been common on Apple's
entire lineup for a few years. DVD-RAM drives had shown up in the Power Mac G4 in 1999 and had been available as a third party upgrade for a few years. By 2003, PowerBooks and iBooks were shipping with DVD burners installed.
So, I think what happened is Apple kept putting whatever Iomega sent them into their machines literally until the bitter end of the product line.
To add to all of that, it appears an Apple-installed Zip 250 was in fact available for (or at least the MDD had been designed with it in mind) the MDD.
It would've been interesting to see whether or not Apple continued building Zips in after that, but if I recall, Zip-equipped models had had to be delayed a couple of times due to Zip manufacturing or shipping delays, so Apple probably wasn't all that sad to let go of that particular BTO option.
Networking was unnecessary for the average only one mac user
In 1997, sure. Today?
Networking was an unnecessary PITA when a PowerBook was added and Zips were common on both.
Interestingly! Apple never built or released their own OEM PowerBook Zip modules. It was always VST or Iomega doing the actual building of entire upgrade modules for Zip on the PowerBooks. It was in the ecosystem, but for whatever reason, Apple didn't build or even bundle it on the PowerBooks.
You can throw MO and the rest into that timeline, but it's obvious that Zip hit the sweet spot.
- Sales/market penetration were negligible by comparison.
In the US, sure. MO was always ahead by a capacity tier or two. I was looking through a 1994 MacWorld where 650 meg MO was already popular and 128 meg MO was advertised a few times. By 1997, 3.5" MO was up to 640 megs and 5.25 was up to either 2.6 or 5.2 gigs. Costs for the drive were a little higher, but cost for media was a little lower, so MO really relied on someone looking critically at what was there and then evaluating the technical claims made about each and perhaps looking at MO's history into the '80s (the original NeXT system shipped with only MO in its base configuration, for example, so the technology had a bit of a record by the '90s) and make a decision.
Just because MO "lost" to Zip (despite being made for almost ten more years at the tail end of their lives, and being available as an add-on for almost every computer Zip had been available for) in the '90s doesn't mean people are strictly doomed to accept zip and its problems today.
- Apple wove Zip into the DNA of the Mac for approx. eight years because there was no other viable option.
- Retailers only keep product that sells on their shelves.
Apple did not weave Zip into the DNA of the Mac. They bundled a product Iomega practically gave to them. It was a smart business move because Iomega was practically paying retailers to keep zip products on their store shelves, because for better or worse, even computer focused retail and even in the '90s didn't always keep everything more technical users might want on hand.
Just because you can't walk into the Wal Mart or even MicroCenter or Fry's Electronics and buy an RDX or an LTO mechanism doesn't mean these things don't exist, it just means they're beyond the tpical markets for those stores. (Interestingly, Fry's and CompUSA and MicroCenter and the like
specifically probably did have MO and similar products in stock at their stores, but not every town had one of those. Not every
region even had one of those kinds of stores. I know in most of Arizona, you would have had to drive to Phoenix or Tucson to buy much beyond the basics for your computer. (Arguably: you still do today if you want to buy it in person, but buying online is much easier today than it would've been in the '90s.)
I bet if literally any other storage company offered Apple whatever aggressive deal Iomega did, they would have taken that too. Heck, it's not hard to imagine an alt-universe where Sony is a lot more aggressive with
MD-Data (that came out in 1992-1993 if I remember correctly) and Apple sells it as an add-on available for or as part of configurations in most bay-having II, Quadra, Centris, LC, and Performa computers. Or, Fujitsu is more aggressive with their MO products, and does the same.
That you can't find a blank bezels for what you feel are Zip infested Macs pretty much proves the point.
I have found a faceplate for the QS. Even if the person I am going to trade with decides not to, I can just pull the Zip out when it comes time to put something else in that slot.. I'm not angry my Macs have zip. I would just rather put different things in those spots. If it came right down to it, I'm comfortable just running a Zip faceplate with nothing behind it. I ran my blue-and-white that way for several years before I moved a Zip drive out of a PC into it, which is why mine's got a white/beige Zip in it, instead of a black one a little more common for those systems, for example.
On my beige, I have a blank faceplate, I can probably just buy another on eBay or duplicate it with 3d scanning and printing if I really care that much. (Interesting side-idea:
also replacing the CD-ROM with a blank faceplate, for a cleaner overall look, and to fit another hard disk in that drive's spot.)
I agree with you wholeheartedly that uniserver's internal Zip as HDD shenanigans were misguided
I'm pretty sure I saw advice to this effect within the last six months. Perhaps not about mounting a zip internally, behind a faceplate or anything.
However you and others are confusing thel timelines or outright ignoring history.
Hm.
To be honest, and I say this because I've literally been looking things up in period-appropriate MacWorld magazines as I go along, and referring to web sites from the time period devoted to the click of death issue, such as
https://www.grc.com/tip/codfaq1.htm, along with some other links I have dropped in, I don't think so.
Just for fun, I've attatched a (not extremely exhaustive, admittedly) comparison chart of removable storage technologies reviewed by MacWorld in November 1998. My previous recollections on the cost per gig were off by a little bit, but were, proportionally, correct. Zip had the highest cost per megabyte. 2GB Jaz was a third that. SuperDisk was pushing a bit over half. MO was a sixth.
The main difference, of course, is MO drives cost around twice what Zip drives did. Not bad. One thing to note about this chart is by the time Imation branded USB superdisk drives started shipping at retail, they were very closely competitive with Iomega's USB Zip drive pricing. (Interestingly: it appears by November Iomega still didn't have anything announced,
none of the catalog resellers list a USB Zip drive in this issue, which means you're stuck buying a SCSI adapter or using ethernet or localtalk to move files to Zip, but Imation's own drive was available, and not very expensive.
I also attatched a sidebar about MO technology, it agrees that it basically came down to an ecosystem issue and the American tendency to only look at the first relevant price tag that comes up: the cost of the drive itself. Zip and Jaz won on those fronts, and Iomega marketed them extremely heavily, so they "won" here. As such, if you wanted to work with that installed base, you kind of had to also buy the same kind of drive.
And I attached a page from one of those multipage catalog reseller ads. I looked at all the big names with the multipage spreads and none of them had USB Zip drives. I know that would change in time, but it's definitely an interesting sidenote. LS-120 was very very slow if you look at the benchmarks, but it was probably about as fast as a normal floppy so if you were just using it for floppies and you had a couple of the cartridges for a backup, it likely didn't matter.
Anyway, just because that's the history doesn't mean we're strictly beholden to use what everyone else did at the time. We can easily simply avoid using removable storage on our Macs, in favor of networking, which is also prototypical by the way, MacWorld was
always writing about networking, or we can pick storage technologies that meet our needs better. And, for better or worse, I don't know about you, but one of my needs is reliability.
Also, regarding MO's speed: ironically, I hear MO can be sped up a lot by using Mac OS 10.2.0 or newer, which changed the way files are copied from one disk to another to be slightly riskier, but a much more bulk operation, making the actual transfer much faster. That should benefit all storage media, but the effect was probably
particularly noticeable on anything MacWorld panned for slowness, since Mac OS itself was responsible for part of the slowness.
I'll just quote the magazine, this is from page 66:
Expandability
Until recently, one of the prime virtues of removable-cartridge technology was that it opened up the golden road to unlimited storage capacity: RUn out of room? Just add another cartridge. But times have changed.
All you have to do is take a quick look at the ads in the back of MacWorld to discover that hard drives are now (relatively) cheap. You can buy a 9GB hard drive for around $600, and 4GB units cost a bit over $300. Do the math: buy a Jaz 2GB drive with one 2GB cartridge for around $400 and then add a three-pack of 2GB cartridges for an additional $300. Compared with buying a $600 9GB hard-disk drive, you've just paid $100 more for 1GB less space.
Hard drives also come out on top in terms of speed. Even the fastest removable storage drive we tested wasn't half as fast as MacBench 5.0's reference drive -- the stock internal drive on the Power Macintosh G3/300.
Most important, remember that hard drives are far more reliable than any magnetic media removable cartridge drive and are designed specifically to be run for extended periods of time. Economies, speed, and safety dictate that if you simply want to expand your storage capability, buy a bigger hard drive. Or two.
Remember: DAT and Travan were still common and imminently affordable at this time. If you bought a Beige G3/300 (8GB stock drive, BTW) and dropped two more 9GB disks into it, it wouldn't at all be unreasonable to go ahead and just start using a CD-R drive or a tape drive as a backup drive. 18GB disks are also available in the ads in this issue, and 40 and 70 gig DLT tape systems were available, so if that was the goal and you had the money, there was no reason to look at external cartridges at all, if your need didn't
specifically involve swapping drives with the service bureau or your collaborators.
So, lots of different technologies were available. Mixing technologies wouldn't have been unreasonable, and if your strategy was just to store everything internally, then you'd likely still want
something for carrying files across town. It would have been a few years yet before putting something on an online service and retrieving it at your destination (or emailing a link to your collaborator, or working with files directly stored or synced to cloud services) would be practical.
Interestingly, Zip failed a couple years before that, even, and CDs were a huge pain. A large proportion (perhaps as many as had zip drives) or Power Mac G4s had DVD-RAM capability, and in 2003 or 2003, Sony XDCAM/Professional Disc at 23 gigs launched, so perhaps those found some use before people finally moved on. (Plus, USB storage devices, iPods could have file storage spaces set aside, and there were a few other mid-2000s data storage tricks.)
Definitely don't remember running into that problem until now. Just surprised that the Zip disk loaded up when I got the right drivers loaded. Was a stroll through memory lane exploring through the disk, like a bunch of buried treasure I forgot I had. Or a lot of money I just saved by spending 15 minutes on Geico dot calm. Except, I can't do anything with most of the files. 
