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Top 10 Apple Flops
Kelly McNeill writes "Though Apple computer is known for some of the computing and technology industry's most notable innovations, its not as if the company hasn't also taken its lumps. Thomas Hormby submitted the following editorial contribution to osOpinion/osViews, which supplies us with his top ten list of Apple's (and some of associated partners) most significant flops throughout the company's history."
At least one of the flops isn't the OS the entire company is based on. Just sayin'.
I know nothing
I just think it's a bit sad to concentrate on someone's failures.
I think if you were to look over the last few years of posts on slashdot, regarding Apple, you'd see that "we" have been concentrating on their successes, with very few exceptions. I don't think an article that will probably generate interest for a few hours will do Apple's rep any harm.
Apple starve the market of "old tech" just before releasing "new tech", thus creating massive demand and huge sales figures, and you describe this as a blunder? I'll have two of whatever you're having!
was really the whole Performa line of computers. At the time the Performa's were aimed at the home user and overall they were a decent computer. But the flop part was the fact that there were something like 8,000 different versions! (Of course, I am exaggerating, but only by a little bit.)
I remember going to OfficeDepot and looking at the Performas and they along had like six different models with six different model numbers. Something like 6510, 6511, 6512, 6514, 6515, etc. (I know the actual numbers were different. These are to illustrate my point.) There were just very subtle differences between the models but for whatever reason, it warranted a different number. Basically it was a nightmare trying to remember what was the difference between any two numbers. That whole scheme of trying to provide a range of configurations was a flop. Fortunately, Steve undid that and cut down the product line into four basic models. I, for one, welcomed that.
No trees were harmed in the composition of this; however, numerous electrons were inconvenienced.
Virginia Tech did.
I'm a Plastic Engineer. Those cracks are not so easy to eliminate. On a molded 2 cm thick piece of PolyCarbonate, it is very difficult eliminate internal stresses. It can be done, but the cycle times on the molding process probably would be measured in hours instead of minutes or seconds. If they had introduced a heavily "cracked" model of the Cube they probably could have gotten away with saying it was "character marks". All that they would have to do is spead up the cycle time and build in some more internal stresses. Pop a piping hot piece of plastic into a tank of ice water and then build a computer in it! I think that it would have looked cool.
Why doesn't anything interesting happen when I have mod points?
The original Mac ran on a 68000. A slow 16/32-bit processor with no MMU or support for VM. It also had limited memory.
There is nothing wrong with assembly language or cooperative scheduling, if you are willing to take the time to do it well and in a disciplined manner.
The Mac team did their best with what was available at a reasonable cost. I'm not going to blame them for decisions that were suboptimal on processors that would not exist for many years.
If you wanted a Xerox workstation, they were available, at stratospheric prices.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Averatec 3200 series. http://www.averatec.com/notebooks/3200series.htm
My dad got one for $999 with DVD burner, 80gb HD, etc.
Not only is this laptop sub-1000$, it specs closely to the Mac and is a much better deal than the 12" iBook. In fact, I bought one myself when I was shopping for a laptop and even w/ the Apple education discount, the Averatec was a better deal.