Slashdot Mirror
Eight Biggest Tech Flops Ever
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.'"
I didn't see Slashdot on there...
activestudios web design
Windows! Why isn't Windows on there? What other operating system almost brings down the Internet every month because it's hosting 129873 viruses? Bob didn't do that, and it made the list.
:) Hey that's catchy.
Shame on you, yahoo.
My other car is first.
During the war they promised me there'd be flying cars, where's my flying car? --Red
meh
I still use Dataplay. The sound quality on a dataplay disk is much higher than that of a CD.
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.
I sure could use some news right now, and I don't feel like loading a webpage. I sure hope my screen saver kicks in soon.
The biggest FLOPS can be found here.
If you're so in love with the King's English, you should look into proper capitalization and punctuation. Ass.
Oh yeah, I forgot. They aren't technical.
Need Mercedes parts ?
What you failed to notice is that the article was written by Jim Louderback. This should explain everything.
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...
Yeah, can you imagine loosing 40 gigs of data instead of the usual 40 megs? ;)
My vote for the biggest tech flop (with the exception of all the tech stocks that went from $100 to $1 a share in the crash of 2001) has got to be the 'Pen Computer' of the early 1990s.
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!
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.
:)
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
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Wow, Space shuttles and attack jets are home computing in your world.
I want entry...
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
Unfortunately, that's also Apple's pricing strategy.
Having spent 5 years in Boston, I think the proper solution to the traffic is to shut off all transportation into and out of the city. Keep all the f_ing liberals in their zoo and don't force traffic to pass through that huge slum.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
They had more failures (Sega CD, 32X, Saturn) than I have hot dinners...
Sincerely,
Seth Finklestein
Long-Time Apple
I'm a bananna!
At first I thought yahoo DSL was on the list and I thought, "Wow, that took some guts to admit!" and then noticed the text "ADVERTISEMENT" above the image.
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
Unless you believe it was intended all along to be the hard drive only to be used 8 hours a day, and that failure was the users fault if they used it for more hours a day than that.
But perhaps this is a local phenomenon. I'm sure you're right, and the Zip! drive has gone the way of the pteradactyl everywhere outside Los Angeles.
Nope - I can confirm a sighting of a pterod^W^WZip media on sale near Bristol, UK, just a couple of weeks ago.
In fact... hey! What's that slot in the front of my computer?! And... this red cartridge thing I put all my backups on... it says Zip on it! I always thought that was something to do with the compression program, but maybe I was wrong.
That'd wipe out several percent of the pr0n collection!