Setapp teamed up with Pacific Content, a leading podcast services company in North America, to bring up the remarkable stories to life in the Ahead of Its Time series. The new show explores the forgotten origins of today’s most transformative technology.
- Kyiv-based Setapp, the first app subscription service for macOS and iOS by MacPaw, releases the original podcast Ahead of Its Time. Aimed at innovators and creative entrepreneurs, this 8-episode series explores the mysterious origins of today’s most popular technology that was invented, and forgotten, before it changed the world.
- The inventor of facial recognition software was years ahead of the competition but never got credit for his work because it was kept secret by the CIA. The first VR glove was a groundbreaking piece of tech that would eventually become one of the gaming industry’s biggest flops. And when Kodak execs were shown an early prototype of the first digital camera, they flat out rejected the idea.
- Hosted by Julia Furlan (Vox Media’s Go For Broke and NPR’s Life Kit), the Ahead of Its Time podcast talks with the inventors of these technologies who struggled to get their ideas off the ground as well as modern-day innovators building on the work of the tech underdogs who came before them. Each 25-minute episode delves into their past, relives their eureka moments, and investigates their latest projects that are, today, ahead of their time.
- The first episode of Ahead of Its Time is titled “VR gloves: Where air guitar meets a Nintendo flop, meets the future of remote surgery”. It’s about a man named Tom Zimmerman who remembers how his love for air guitar spawned the development of his groundbreaking VR technology that would morph into the Nintendo Power Glove. Then Bob Crockett tells the story of how a college dropout convinced him to start a VR company that could one day transform healthcare.
- You can subscribe by following us on Apple, Spotify, Google, and other platforms to automatically get alerts when a new episode airs.
Today, we need to prioritize innovation more than ever to address the global challenges and keep up with the pace of rapid digitalization. As an innovator, you might struggle to bring your idea to life, or even fail. But if you truly believe in the transformative nature of your invention, you must keep going, and the right time — or circumstances — will come, ~ Oleksandr Kosovan, the founder of Setapp and CEO of MacPaw
There are only so many people, often only one, who can speak to the experience of creating a certain piece of technology. And if that person wasn’t available, we had to scrap that episode and find an entirely new topic. But ironically, this twist of fate forced us to find different tech and inventors who we had not thought to cover when the show was first conceptualized. In doing so, we discovered new stories that ended up being some of our favorite episodes of the entire series. ~ David Swanson, Showrunner and Producer at Pacific Content
- Come Back Alive is one of the largest charitable foundations that supports Ukrainian soldiers.
- MacPaw Development Fund
- Army SOS, which develops drones;
- Help on the Ministry of Defense website.