INQUIRER Top Five Next Big Things That Weren't

YOU'VE GOT A pretty strong inclination that it's: (a) all a load of hype (b) the best thing since Big Bang and Big Brother (c) representative of the folly of our appearance-centred age.

You think that it would be even better with: (a) Java and 3G (b)an attitude towards outsiders that doesn't smack of North Korea (c) a price tag that didn't look like it should be stuck on a second-hand car.

You think that Steve Jobs is: (a) the new messiah (b) a snake-oil merchant (c) beginning to look a bit like Paul Theroux.

Your pub talk is good but the truth is you just don't know if the iPhone is going to fly because nobody does. There are just too many variables. But you think it's got a shot and that's what the current mania is all about: the notion that this might, just might be insanely great, the Next Big Thing.

No matter how good your blarney is though, you wouldn't put the mortgage on it because you remember the time when you laughed off the idea of Ronald Reagan becoming American president, the time when the Beatles got knocked back, the man who said White Christmas wouldn't be a hit. And you also remember all those sure things your brother-in-law told you were a sure thing: Sigue Sigue Sputnik, Al Gore and the Millennium Dome.

And deep in your heart, you're thinking: I wish he would just belt up and tell us The Inquirer's Guide to the Top Five Next Big Things That Weren't. So here they are.

5. The Sinclair QL. QL stood up for ‘quantum leap' and lots of computer enthusiasts thought that's what it would represent when reassuringly boffin-looking Brit Sir Clive Sinclair announced the product in the reassuringly futuristic year of 1984. This was the box that would take Sinclair from hobbyist bedroom to blue-chip office. It had a multitasking operating system in QDOS and a hot new chip in the Motorola 68000. But bugs and reliability issues hit the QL and production was suspended just a year after it began. Amstrad picked up Sinclair's lines but business had moved on: to a new thing called the IBM Personal Computer.

4. OS/2 2.0. Microsoft was beginning to get Windows 3,0 bundled on PCs but IBM planned "a better DOS than DOS, a better Windows than Windows" with OS/2 2.0. Unfortunately this involved paying a licence to Microsoft, its one-time collaborator on OS/2 that had moved on to focus on Windows and had collected a ton of ISV support. IBM had clueless ISV relations, an install routine only a geek could love and an advertising plan that included the suggestion that OS/2 was a great games platform. Despite being a true multitasking, 32bit operating system, OS/2 died a death on the desktop and eventually on the server too.

3. Segway. In 2001 it was codename Ginger and the meme that put the meme in meme. There was this new thing coming and it was going to be massive. Don't tell anybody but it's going to change everything. It's like a personal, hovering plane thing you can use on the streets, I heard. Sell the kids, sell the house, sell the dog, but whatever you do, buy a… Segway.

2. Transmeta. The fact that nobody seemed to know much about Transmeta other than it was startup developing a new microprocessor only encouraged the hype. Linus Torvalds was involved and he could do no wrong, right? Wrong, and when the company came out from under cover in 2000 with the Crusoe processor it didn't take too long to figure out that it had hatched a lame duck.

1. Newton. Back in 1993, Apple's Newton technology was the future, thanks to breakthrough handwriting recognition and ultraportable design. But the handwriting recogniser didn't and buyers spent many unhappy hours attempting to justify their dodgy investments to unimpressed families and friends. µ