Eight Biggest Tech Flops Ever 627
cuppm writes "Yahoo! News has an article on the The Eight Biggest Tech Flops Ever.
'What distinguishes a simply bad product from the truly awful? Sometimes it's a dreadful user interface. Other times it's a product that successfully addresses a particularly daunting problem - yet one shared by relatively few people. And often competitive or financial pressure forces new products to market before they're ready - full of bugs and horribly unusable. Still other times, the products arrive too early. Eventually they become a success, but often after the founding company has been ruined.'"
Hey (Score:5, Funny)
Didn't see ICANN on the list either (Score:5, Funny)
PC Jr. (Score:4, Insightful)
IBM never recovered from the Junior.
Wow... I wish I could NOT recover like IBM has! :)
Re:PC Jr. (Score:3, Informative)
Until the advent of VGA and superior audio solutions, the Tandy graphics and sound options (really originating in the PC Jr) were king..
I'm sure someone
Yet... DivX missed how? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yet... DivX missed how? (Score:2, Interesting)
That would have required another paragraph to be added just to explain the difference.
Re:Yet... DivX missed how? (Score:3, Interesting)
The Pen Computer (Score:4, Funny)
This was going to be huge! A handheld PC that used a stylus instead of a keyboard. It would read your handwriting; It would communicate telepathicly. It would be bigger than free beer and chicken!
Imagine...doctors would rush out to buy a machine that take their scribbles and convert it into clear word-processor ready text. So what if the software couldn't tell a handwritten prescription of Lysergic Acid Dythelemide from Lysterine and Diet Coke!
Imagine...Restraunts would flock to buy these $3000 plastic boxes for each and every one of their $3.50/hr plus tips waitresses. They would do it because it would be so much more efficient than constantly buying 59 cent order pad booklets once a week.
So here's a hearty cheer to all those people who listened to this insanity, opened their wallets, and showered money on these bozos.
Here's to GO!, Here's to Milliennia!, Here's to Pi Systems!, Here's to IO!, and an especially grand huzzah to Apple, who spent several several hundred millions of dollars in the biggest positive-feedback bullshit loop in the tech industry history!
Re:The Pen Computer (Score:3, Funny)
In
Um, like duh! (Score:4, Funny)
Shame on you, yahoo.
Re:Um, like duh! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Um, like duh! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Um, like duh! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Um, like duh! (Score:2, Funny)
UH NO (Score:5, Insightful)
Marketing wise, Windows is the biggest success in the history of mankind. Bill Gates strategies and tactics, however illegal or immoral they might have been, led to the rise of this operating system over the much more powerful Macintosh of its day.
I know we all hate Microsoft, but as far as being a product that was marketed perfectly, windows gets that prize anyday.
Re:UH NO (Score:3, Interesting)
Myth. By the time Windows took off, with version 3.1, it was technically as sophisticated as the MacOS of the day, and the hardware it ran on was faster and cheaper. It lagged in UI design and stability - but don't you realise that one of the reasons Windows was less stable than MacOS was because it was doing more? It had real mult
Re:UH NO (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Um, like duh! (Score:5, Interesting)
Mistake on Clik! Drive (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Mistake on Clik! Drive (Score:3, Insightful)
/greger
Re:Mistake on Clik! Drive (Score:2)
Re:Mistake on Clik! Drive (Score:2)
The IOmega Clik (Score:5, Insightful)
Anybody else remember what it was like walking around industry trade shows that year with a constant backdrop of "clik" "clik" everywhere? Trying to carry on a productive conversation at PC Expo that year was about as viable as sleeping in a field of katydids at the height of their season.
Doggone Utah nutjobs with their clueless, murble, gurble, frazzin' . .
Rustin
Re:Mistake on Clik! Drive (Score:3, Insightful)
It's still a huge shame that the Imation Super-Floppy didn't catch on.
Re:Mistake on Clik! Drive (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Mistake on Clik! Drive (Score:5, Interesting)
Still is. It's currently available as a pre-installed option on machines from many of the major PC manufacturers. (I'd say "most" or "all" but I haven't checked.) Iomega even took to using the "Zip" name on other products they sell, to take advantage of the trademark recognition. Zip drives had some problems (I'd still trust them over floppies any day of the week), and better alternatives are overtaking them, but they were hardly a "flop".
Re:Mistake on Clik! Drive (Score:3, Insightful)
After years of ZIP-drive angst (disks failing, becoming corrupted, loosing student work), we're finally getting rid of the damn things and migrating everyone to solid-state USB keychain drives. Far faster and reliable. Long past-due.
So far, the USB drives have worked flawlessly. No moving parts, magnets and dust don't harm them, etc.
N.
Ubiquitous "That 70's show" quote (Score:5, Funny)
IBM Commercial (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Ubiquitous "That 70's show" quote (Score:2)
rj
Re:Ubiquitous "That 70's show" quote (Score:3, Informative)
MMmmmmm (Score:5, Informative)
There is an easy solution to this lets not only stop using technology, not only from the USA, but from since the americas where discovered by modern europeans!
I'm blogging this right now on my own printing press and if anyone laughs I will get medieval on their arse (ass is such an americanism and is banned)
or alternativly we could find something better to do than look at year end reviews, year coming previews and over hyped journalistic endevours.
I can't wait for slashdot to leave the post holiday period and start getting good again
oh, and my fav techno flop is the Sinclair C5
Re:MMmmmmm (Score:3, Insightful)
Dataplay (Score:4, Funny)
Also, and most people don't know this, but if you run a green marker around the edge of the dataplay disk, the sound quality is even better.
Re:Dataplay (Score:5, Informative)
In case people can't tell (and judging by an "informative" rating, they can't), the author of this one meant it as a JOKE.
You don't get higher-than-CD quality in 2/3rds the size, and a green marker does nothing* to any form of digital media - You don't get better or worse quality, you get bits.
Green bits don't sound better than clear bits or blue bits or red bits, although a little too much green might mean you get no bits (ie, render the media unplayable).
* - Relating to making it unplayable, the Sharpie trick to remove the copy protection from some CDs works by making the invalid data track unreadable. It doesn't "improve" the cd, it just breaks it in a way that happens to fix it, ironically enough.
Re:Dataplay (Score:3, Informative)
While the statement that Dataplay is of lesser quality than CDs is true, the above reasoning is misleading. The size of the media, or the number of bytes it can store, are irrelevant to judging its quality. If I had a dataplay disk that stored 100MB, and used it to store a single song at (say) 24bits 60kHz sample rate, it would definitely be "higher-than-CD quality", whatever that means.
Cue Cat (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Cue Cat (Score:2)
If I could just get my CueCat to work with Windows XP...I've tried Catnip and YourCueCat drivers with no success yet. (I wonder if it could have anything to do with how I use a USB keyboard, so just have the 'cat plugged into the PS/2 slot without any keyboa
Re:Cue Cat (Score:3, Informative)
I have never seen a cuecat, but back when I was an undergraduate in ... 2000? I used to write point of sale software for a small house. I spent a lot of time screwing around with barcode readers. Now, if the Cuecat is a s
Re:Cue Cat (Score:5, Interesting)
I modified over 50 of them and sold them to customers with linux Point of Sale systems for resturants and small stores.
I was able to get barcode technology to businesses that could not afford it any other way. (A commercial keyboard-wedge barcode scanner costs $200-$500.00 I sold the cue cats for $25.00)
Cue cat's were excellent and luckily I got 2 cases of them forom the local radio shack when they were tossing the leftovers to offer free replacements to my customers...
(Yes, I have a freelance linux consultation side business/ General Computing consultation business on the side of my real job)
Push (Score:5, Interesting)
Lame (Score:4, Interesting)
Some of the items on the list are flops, but the biggest 8--not hardly.
I'm sure that if we tried, we could come up with a better list of 8 flops..
Shit, OS/2 ain't even on the list. How about Taligent? Bill Gates himself said that Taligent was the one thing he worried about that ended up being absolutely nothing.
What about the Disney Sound Doohicky--It plugged into the parallel port, and gave some of the crappiest sound ever made on a computer.
The list certainly could have been better than that.
Re:Lame (Score:5, Interesting)
Instead, why not try and think of some stuff they missed?
Re:Lame (Score:3, Interesting)
Infomercials aren't so bad. Back when I was a teenager, I used to know the guy who invented DiDi 7. I even beat him at connect 4 once.
But to the point, you can change the channel when an infomercial is on. Pop ups are damned intrusive.
IMHO, pop ups are worse, much worse than spam. I delete spam before I even read it.
Re:Lame (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Lame (Score:2)
flop vs. crap? (Score:4, Insightful)
OS/2 may have been a failure in the home/desktop market, but it was a pretty big success in the business/embedded market. It's use in bank ATMs alone may well qualify it as the 2nd most successful OS to date.
How about Taligent?
Better, although it might be disqualified on a technicality: does something have to exist before you can really call it a flop?
What about the Disney Sound Doohicky
I dunno, never heard of it. Are you sure it isn't just ordinary crap? To be a flop, there has to be an expectation of success, and to be a huge flop, there has to be an expectation of huge success. So things can be amazingly crappy without ever being a flop. In fact, when it comes to high-tech, crap is almost the rule, rather than the exception. And everyone knows this, which is why expectations are usually low, which in turn is why huge flops are kinda rare, despite all the utter crap that's out there.
Toll Collect (Score:2, Interesting)
Snafu all the way.....
Re:Toll Collect (Score:3, Informative)
TollCollect [toll-collect.de]
Fosters Article [fosters.com]
They were also given the "BigBrother Award" [google.com](google translation)
Also missing ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Also missing ... (Score:5, Informative)
After bankrupsy they were able to change their price structure to somthing more sane. I use mine at $1.50 a minuite - and the phones are now under $1000.
I highly recomended Iridium if you spend any time in the wilderness. With the serial calble and a old Psion Revo - I can telnet to any of my servers from anywhere and the whole package is under three pounds.
Re:Also missing ... (Score:5, Funny)
Man, just when I think I've gone over the edge into complete geek, someone like you comes along and describes telnetting into your servers from the middle of Antarctica, and I feel much more normal again
In a way, Iridium is a success (Score:5, Informative)
Iridium handsets seem large by cell phone standards, but military radios with long range capability are still a backpack item or worse. There's more network capacity in the Iridium system than in military commo nets, and you can call any phone in the world.
Think of it as an instrument of empire, like the British East India Trading Company, not a business.
Biggest flops (Score:5, Funny)
My Personal Observations (Score:4, Insightful)
How can you forget the entire .COM boom/bust? (Score:5, Insightful)
He breaks out MagicCap/Go seperately. Why? Throw in the Newton and a few others and just say that the early days of pen computing as a general purpose input device was a complete flop.
How about failed OS ventures. Pink, Taligent, Be, NeXT, OS/2, etc.
WebTV? It may have been a flop, but one of the biggest, I think not.
TransMeta anyone?
Windows version Lotus 1-2-3, it's failure helped to change the landscape of application isv's and helped to firmly root Office as defacto.
Apple Lisa/III. Nuff said.
PCJr, NOTHING compared to PS/2, the system that helped IBM lose the PC market.
Re:How can you forget the entire .COM boom/bust? (Score:2)
I mean, fuck, they got paid cash to take over Apple.
Re:How can you forget the entire .COM boom/bust? (Score:2)
OS/2 was hardly a failure in the way that the article means "failure," i.e. not just a product that was "simply bad" but one that is "truly awful."
OS/2 was actually very nice. Certainly, it never gained any significant mainstream success (compared to Windows 95 at the time) by many people used it and loved it. I stopped following OS/2's progress a while ago -- but I think it may even still be available [ecomstation.com] from a third-party developer.
NeXTSte
Re:How can you forget the entire .COM boom/bust? (Score:3, Informative)
I was referring to the early attempts at pushing pen computing into the mainstream. As a technology obviously pen based computing is alive and well (Palm/CE) and many of todays systems benefited from the lessons of those early systems.
While, Pink/Taligent went nowhere, Be, Next, and OS/2 enjoyed long (but small) market. OS/2 was used heavil
PCjr (Score:5, Interesting)
4-voice sound when most IBM-compatibles could only produce one sound at a time
16-color graphics when CGA (4 color) was standard
Video memory in system RAM - commonly used on many lower priced motherboards these days
Infrared wireless keyboard
Yeah, it was expensive and limited. But it also had some interesting advances.
--RJ
FAA Traffic control system (Score:5, Interesting)
Folks - that 1.5 BILLION wasted
Re:FAA Traffic control system (Score:3, Insightful)
Itanic (Score:2)
MD-ROM format was a HUGE missed opportunity (Score:5, Interesting)
Correction (Score:2)
If they couldn't move that in 1999, that's gotta be the biggest marketing flop in history!
Can't entirely blame the author for this typo -- K, Meg, Gig, Tera -- can get a bit blurry in the psat tense
well, not quite accurate (Score:2)
What really killed Go was probably a faked demo of Windows for Pen Computing at one of the big shows, which gave investors and buyers the impression that Microsoft was just about ready to release a high-quality pen computing environment. Yet, Microsoft didn't have much pen computing software, and when they eventually came out with something, it was far w
I currently work with an Ex-employee of Go (Score:2)
Way ahead my ass!..
No Lotus: Jazz? (Score:2)
WebTV sales stalled at a million users? (Score:2, Interesting)
Had they advertised, WebTV would be ubiquitous. If people buy WebTV, they're not buying a computer...they avoid the MS tax, no sales of office. I can't believe they put WebTV on that list. There are many people out there that buy computers to access the internet only. What better device for a novice user than their TV? I'm not being a proponent for WebTV, I'm just saying that WebTV was taking off up until MS bought it,
More Tech Flops? (Score:2, Funny)
From Yahoo! Shopping:
- Apple iPod 20GB
- Nikon CoolPix 3100
- Nokia 3650
Odd, I really didn't consider those some of the biggest tech flops ever...
Clik! drive? (Score:2, Insightful)
Iomega Clik! Drive: In 1999, just as recordable CDs started getting really cheap and popular, Iomega released its own proprietary way to write nearly 40 gigabytes of data to a removable disk.
Honorable mention (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait a minute (Score:3, Interesting)
I know one, precisely one, person who owns a NeXT Station. I know many who own WebTVs and Internet Appliances.
Oh, wait a minute... I get it now. There are links to buy iPods on the page. Can't bite the hand that feeds you, I guess.
LK
Re:Wait a minute (Score:4, Informative)
Mac OS X draws from three sources, Mac OS, BSD, and NeXT. From BSD it draws a lot of low level stuff and part of the kernel. From NeXT it draws some other low level stuff and the rest of the kernel, along with a bunch of interface ideas. From Mac OS, it draws inspiration.
Yes, Apple did lots of work. But that doesn't mean there isn't a ton of NeXT code still working away under the surface. As just one minor example, look through any random Cocoa headers, and you'll find #ifdefs for WIN32, which are left over from Yellow Box's Windows NT days. Just look at the progression of developer releases, from Rhapsody on forward, all the way through to Mac OS X. The early developer releases were basically NeXT with a Mac-looking interface, ported to the PowerPC. The system evolved from there until you get what we have today.
VideoPhones (once called PicturePhones) (Score:3, Interesting)
Number One should have been (Score:4, Interesting)
Wow, an electric wheelchair where you get to stand up... that's what Americans need is less exercise. Good thing you can fit 6 of them in your SUV.
kozmo (Score:3, Interesting)
Apple's hit & misses (nobody's mentioned) (Score:5, Interesting)
The Newton is really neither. It wasn't really a money loser for Apple (but wasn't a money maker either) - we also have to consider that the CREATORS of the Palm and later Handspring moved on from the original Newton team. The latest Treo is essentially what I think the Newton would have become.
Three of Apple's biggest misses are actually some of the coolest products they've ever introduced:
1) Apple Set Top Box - it was going to be a Tivo/Media Server - almost 10 YEARS before they are starting to become mainstream. I have one of these boxes and was able to get some content working on them. Apparently Apple tried to market these to resort hotels (the info I've been able to run on the box was for DisneyWorld Hotels)
more info can be found at www.applefritter.com
2) Apple Macintosh TV - this was a really cool looking Mac/TV combo that was sold in the education market that is underpowered but again WAY before the time of this type of integration (by about 3 years)
3) G3 All In One - this was only distributed in the education market and was actually a better iMac (had PCI slots, floppy, zip, CD, A/V in and out and three NORMAL RAM slots) I use this unit as my TV - it has great speakers and I have recently been able to upgrade it to 1Ghz G4. This was out 8 months before the iMac
more info can be found at www.apple-history.com
WebTV and Internet Appliances (Score:3, Informative)
PC component prices plunged during the Internet Appliance heyday, so a full PC wound up costing just a few dollars more than the truncated Applicances.
WebTV:
But when sales stalled at around a million users, someone woke up and realized that low-resolution TVs are lousy at displaying emails and web pages
If these are really the reasons for their failures then both may experience a resurgence. I say that because of the new TV's that are in the stores today. Plasma/LCD TV's were a big seller for Christmas and their price has been projected to drop to half what they are today by next Christmas. Their crisp, bright, HDTV capable pictures will cure what Louderback says ails the category. It is just a matter of time. And Microsoft makes so much money in its monopoly markets of OS and Office S/W that it has all the time in the world for WebTV to take off.
Secondly, WebTV IS an Internet Appliance just not in the form that Ellison was pushing with the "Internet Computer". People will continue to buy TV's for their livingrooms, kitchens, bedrooms, and the backseat of their SUV's not PC's. And once those TV's are capable of displaying high definition images, then the asian commodity manufacturers will jump into the market and bring the prices down along with a multitude of features. I can imagine settop boxes competing year after year with new features like voice and gesture recognition instead of a clumsy remote controls, DRM, long term storage of data in Internet connected facilities, access to grid computing, MMORPG, biometrics, etc. all for $199 and the effort of connecting a few cables to a preexisting TV.
Within a few years I think we will finally see the success of both of these categories.
WebTV really that bad? (Score:3, Informative)
For them this was better then any computer. You sign up, you get your email account, you get access to weather, channel listings (they have WebTV with cable) You can program it to switch to specific channels at specific times. No worries for viruses, worms, corrupted file systems or bloated registries.
For people who just wanted an email address, gamble online, check news, weather, and program their tv/vcr, it was amazing.
Sure low res, and most of these features are in many products, but at the time it was a great idea.
yahoo DSL (Score:3, Funny)
Tech Flops or Pioneers? (Score:5, Insightful)
I could go on with early attempts to cirumnavigate the globe, invent the lightbulb, etc. Many failures and cosmic wastes of money prevailed before a breakthrough occured. The buckets of gold handed to you by the Queen to go try something aren't as forthcoming. You have to support yourself with a capitalistic business model. The marketing of the tech product that isn't quite there is an effort (sometimes shady)to recoup R&D money. If you're lucky you get a few spin-offs along the way to pay your bills. If your're not, your business dies and leaves behind a product that "failed". Inevitably another business scoops up the pieces and finishes the job when there is enough money or advancement has solved the technical hurdles.
What matters, is the idea and the useful knowledge that comes from failing. Today's failure might just be the one useful piece of knowledge that makes tomorrow's success fall into place. In his list I see the forerunners and failures that have made Tablet PC, PDA, current GUI interfaces, DVD, etc. possible. So what if the previous business model and marketing attempts sucked. I am glad for my technophile little self that someone tried to make it happen, so I could enjoy their eventual fruits. Innovation is rarely a function of market penetration and stock price. This guy's column is suitable for the MBA crowd, not the tech crowd.
The difference between a flop and a success (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's my top 5 list:
* Attempts at making the IBM compatible PC proprietary. Everyone who has tried has failed, including IBM!
* Copy Protection. From the damaged sector floppies of the 80s to dongles, to encryption schemes to future DRM. All of it has been an abject failure. Anyone remember Copy IIpc?
* Proprietary removable media formats with the exception of iomega.
* Razor blade business model for technology with less than a two year lifespan.
* Proprietary networking technologies. They work for a year then die. Proprietary means only one company makes it. Thomas-Conrad comes to mind.
IBM PCjr (Score:3, Insightful)
The chiclet keyboard was a bad idea, but it had a purpose: You could insert overlays showing which key does what for a particular application. Even in its day, though, IBM got enough flak about the chiclet board that they sent all PCjr owners a more normal keyboard free of charge.
I don't think the sidecar alone was the reason for its demise (although not being able to use standard ISA cards certainly contributed to it). The main problem was that it just wasn't compatible enough with the PC, lacking "business" features such as DMA and hard-disk support. And it had a name that was hard to take seriously.
Re:RIAA? (Score:2)
But let's get real here. Napster in its peak was the best that music filesharing is ever going to be. No pay system will ever be able to top that.
Chris
Re:RIAA? (Score:3, Insightful)
As a long-time Apple, I have to disagree. Forbes magazine, one of the United States' foremost authorities on technology, named iTunes Music Store its Product of the Year [slashdot.org] for 2003. Now, I know several people who use Windows, and all of them are of the opinion that "if you can download it for free, then you should download it for free." This attitude is highly destructive to the intellectual property industry, and will only lead to such initiatives as "Trusted" Computing gaining a foothold.
To address you
Re:RIAA? (Score:2, Insightful)
Now that companies are finally moving on it, the problem is that it doesn't meet our exact specifications, and instead of trying to work with them we continue to pirate. Hmm, sounds like somebody wants a half-brained excuse to take a five-fingered discount.
I only owned two (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I only owned two (Score:2)
The Audrey however, was underpowered even for the software it ran. Spending 3 minutes waiting for an "Internet Device" to load just doesn't cut it.
Re:People will hate me for this. (Score:5, Interesting)
This must be a troll, but I'll bite anyway (it's slow this morning). Sorry, but Apple ALWAYS played second fiddle to IBM/Microsoft in the "pc" market wrt market share.
Plus, even if your history weren't totally wrong, your premise is. Even if Apple went under today, the positive impact they had on the industry is far reaching and prevasive. Some of the particulars can be argued, but the fact is that computing in general is a better place thanks to Apple and therefore they can't be considered a "tech flop". After all, a "flop" doesn't last over 20years.
Re:People will hate me for this. (Score:4, Interesting)
not to forget: (Score:3, Insightful)
- Tablet PC
- AmigaOne
- Sun JavaDesktop
- Laserdisc
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
Re:The biggest flop ever.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Amigas sold like hot cakes, and still have a large (overly nostalgic IMO) following.
Neither of them exactly failed...
Re:Hate against Kosmo? (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.pinkdot.com/ [pinkdot.com]
Kosmo's problem was that it tried to do its service nationwide. Stuff like this needs to be done locally.
The Kosmo story is well-chronicled in this movie, e-Dreams. [imdb.com]
Re:bigger flops still... (Score:5, Insightful)
Egads man, the entire web is all about multimedia. How on earth can you claim that it's a flop?
8" floppies
A flop? It was a earlier technology and part of a natural progression. This is like saying that horses were a flop because everyone uses cars now.
RS-232 serial port (25 pins, of which 4 are used)
Are you saying the port is a flop? Which would be wrong because it's the one legacy port that has/will outlive most others. The fact that it doesn't utilize all 25pins. Well the rs232 spec doesn't mention anything about using 25 pins. 9 pin connectors are also very common as well as using POTS telephone cabling (very popular back in the day to wire terminals).
Audio Cassettes for data storage
Hardly, most of the popular home based computers depended on this cheap technology for there "mass" storage needs. It simply became obsolete.
You are misinformed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:bigger flops still... (Score:3, Insightful)
I wanted to make a statement about MSX, which you could hardly call a flop, but then I took a better look at the rest of the list.
It seems a more or less random list without any real argumentation about why the product was such a flop. If you count CD-R as a WORM drive by the way, then this might be the most popular technology so far.
This is more like a list of products that the author dislikes than anything else.
Re:What, no Apple ///? (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, the Apple III-- yeah, that one was a turd.
~Philly
Lisa was a huge flop? (Score:3, Insightful)
As for Newton - how was that a flop? It still has fanatical fans.