Floppy disk production ends, Steve Jobs says “I told you so”

Twelve years after Apple began ringing the death knell for the floppy drive by declining to include one on its iMac computer, the floppy disk era officially comes to an end today as Sony ceases manufacturing the disks. The news comes as a surprise, as most people either didn’t know the disks were still being manufactured or had forgotten that they ever existed in the first place. The public’s mood toward the floppy (or total lack thereof) here in 2010 stands in stark contrast to the tenor back in 1998, when the lack of a floppy drive was the single most discussed aspect of the original iMac by tech pundits leading up to its launch, with many incorrectly predicting that the lack of a floppy drive would not only cause the iMac to flop but also push Apple into bankruptcy.

The floppy disk was in the peculiar position in 1998 of being a technology which was still in wide use but was increasingly looked upon as an unsatisfactory option by users, with little hope of remaining widely relevant in even the near future. Perhaps serendipitously, the official end of the floppy comes just as Apple is in the process of ringing the death knell for Flash, a technology still widely in use but increasingly looked upon displeasingly by users, with little hope of a relevant near term future. Sound familiar?