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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."
Apple and its compatriots have been highly innovative. These companies have proven that even if their ideas are well implemented, they cannot always promote them correctly. Other times, a good idea is implemented poorly, and despite their best marketing effort, the product fails. I have compiled 10 of the most notable products released by Apple or its comrades that have failed. Apple Pippin
Introduced under Spindler's rule as CEO, the Pippin should have won Apple a position in the console market, one Apple had yet to penetrate. Apple's goal was to make the Pippin a multimedia machine, capable of reading CD ROMs, surfing the internet and to play games. Apple had decided to share the Pippin's source code with developers for a licensing fee. The developers had a lot more flexibility, and would be able to redesign the Pippin's software to make it attractive for any number of markets. However, Apple was able to recruit only 4500 developers willing to pay the licensing fee.
The operating system of the Pippin was based on the MacOS and with a PowerPC 603 running at 66 MHZ, the Pippin used a similar processor to desktop macs at that time. Being a multimedia machine, the Pippin was capable of producing CD quality sound, and displaying up to thousands of colors. With the powerful Power PC processor, Apple thrashed Nintendo and Sega consoles performance wise, but never won a sizable portion of the market.
OpenDoc
The concept behind OpenDoc is an intuitive one. Many elements of applications are redundant (calculators, multimedia players, spreadsheets). Why not 'cut them up' and use different modules interchangeably. Each file would then make calls on these different modules as needed. With OpenDoc, if a user wished to create a word processor document that includes a spreadsheet, the user would not have to copy it over as a table, or use a gimped up version included with the word processor. Instead, they could call up the ClarisWorks for OpenDoc Spreadsheet module and have a full-blown spreadsheet in the middle of a word processing document. OpenDoc development started in 1995 in collaboration with Novell, IBM and Apple. In 1997, Apple integrated OpenDoc into its core strategy, releasing several OpenDoc apps, and including the technology in Mac OS 7.6. At the same time, the technology was being developed for Windows and UNIX. The companies created the Ci Labs which would authorize OpenDoc components that proved to be compatible as "Live Objects".
In accordance to Apple's vision, it became possible with the OpenDoc compatible version of ClarisWorks to create a document that integrated various OpenDoc modules. The example below has an integrated Video Conferencing session with QuickTime, a browser frame from CyberDog and a graph from another OpenDoc module.
Since 1996, Novell has ceased Windows development of OpenDoc, forcing IBM to take on responsibilities for the platform at the same time they continued development on their AIX (UNIX from IBM). The two versions both evolved and were mature commercial products in 1997. There were problems for OpenDoc, however. At the same time, Microsoft released ann updated version of OLE, and released ActiveX, that closely mimicked the OpenDoc principles. OpenDoc was embraced by major OS developers, but it had failed to attract third party developers. Mac OS 8 was the last release from Apple to include OpenDoc, and it was quietly killed at the hands of Gil Amelio.
Mac TV
Apple was the first major personal computer manufacturer to release a machine with a bundled TV tuner to the public. The Macintosh TV was Apple's first effort in merging the home theater and personal computer. The machine was also one of the only two black Macs ever made (the second being a special edition 5400 sold only in Europe). The Macintosh TV was first envisioned as a tenth anniversary Mac, but it was eventually cancelled. After the unexpected success of the Color Classic, John Sculley requested that a machine comparable to the Color Classic be made with a CD ROM
This kid clearly did not suffer through the mid-90s, when the Internet was gaining popularity and the great shoal of idiots stormed computer stores to get a Mac "because I heard it was easy to use" and load up one of those ubiquitous copies of "American Online".
I sold Macs the--along with their peripherals--for an awful (and now out of business) New England-based reseller. Along with inept and shifty-eyed management, we sales drones needed to suffer the Apple product line concocted in part by that former sugar-water selling guy and Gil Amelio. Herewith, a short list of the Apple products that always guaranteed heartburn:
- the Apple Centris series. IIRC, had some bizarre 'multimedia' chip that disliked a large number of MIDI software apps of the day.
- those horrible 6xxx series PowerMacs. When Apple made the slightest production change, they incremented the model number by ONE, quickly ending up with a mish-mosh of sluggish pizzaboxes that puzzled we salespeople almost as much as prospective customers. It turned explaining the product line into alphabet soup.
- that horrible 'answering machine' contraption that Apple sold. Difficult for most customers to make work properly, and ate hard disk space.
- eWorld. I think that was in the article. No need to floss a dead horse.
- the stupid hockey puck mouse that was sold with the first wave of iMacs. Annoying beyond belief. How that thing made it out of the Apple ergonomics department is beyond me.