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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."
did they host this on a newton, a pippin, or an apple ///?
This is a fairly good list of notable Apple flubs, but why include Microsoft Word 6? It sure was a dog, but that wasn't Apple's fault.
///. It was such a failure that perhaps the list's originator doesn't even know about it.
In it's place, I'd like to nominate the Apple
According to the first one in TFA:
Problem in database connection
You'd think they'd be a little more specific.
I think a recent blunder many remember but will soon be forgotten is the whole iMac G5 blunder.
Apple misjudged product availability and actually ran out of iMac G4's for two months before they released the iMac G5.
Yeah, the iMac G5 has relaly been making sales records at Apple, but how much of that is due to there being nothing in the iMac line for people to buy for two months?
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
At least one of the flops isn't the OS the entire company is based on. Just sayin'.
I know nothing
Why the heck isn't the Apple /// in there? They made it for three whole years, less than 100,000 units (something around 75,000 I believe?).
///'s reputation was ruined almost right after it was out of the gate, despite the advanced SOS. Production stopped in '83 I believe, and it's a damn good thing Apple had the Mac coming out right afterwards.
The first models were plagued by quality control problems - a clock chip from National Semiconductor that wouldn't work, inadequate ventilation resulting in the unseating of chips (which was rectified by lifting the computer a few inches and dropping it), too-short keyboard cables, and very little software.
The Apple
The coolest voice ever.
Apple has always had significant trouble when Steve Jobs is not at the helm. Gil Amelio and his drive to gain business credibility really put a huge pain on the company.
It has always been about Steve Jobs. The man has insight and what could almost be considered clairvoyance when it comes to building things that people crave. God knows that I'm one of those at his feet, weeping and bathing him in frankincense.
Article text, karma whore free:
"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."
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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 tun
>
>Do you want to play a game?
Ahem. That's "Shall we play a game?" to you, sir.
Turn in your geek card. As mistakes go, that's a WOPR. (Slashdot is a strange game. The only winning move is not to play.)
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.
I dunno, I honestly thought the cube "cracks" could take the place of something as lame as the asinine iMac colors.
For those who don't remember, the Cubes would occasionally develop these "cracks," for lack of a better term. IIRC, owners started to see hairline fissures slowly appear underneath the ploycarbonate surface. Apple played it off by saying it added to the "personality" of the cubes, since each set of cracks was unique.
Heck, I love the cubes and I'd probably put them in that blunder list; if Apple could've figured out a way to make them a bit more powerful or a bit cheaper, they may have been succesful. As it was, their exorbitant pricing simply reinforced the notion that "macs are too expensive."
Posted anonymously to avoid whoring karma!!
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Top 10 Apple Flops
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.
[Image] 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
[Image] 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
[Image] 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
I'll need to know this information before I can top one, much less ten of them!
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
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.
I was once an admin for a mac only company. they ran Eudora mail sever on a tangerine imac. they ran it on a tangerine imac beacuse nobody in the office wanted that color on their desk.
:)
I also once worked for a Mac retailer. 2 guys walked off with a tangerine ibook. the one question i had for my co-workers working at the time was how did you not notice them stealing a bright orange laptop. anyway, i doubt they were able to resell it
http://mlagazine.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=N ews&file=article&sid=137&mode=thread&order=0&thold =0
This one is probably the original that osviews.com is referencing.
creation science book
Actually, if you RTFA, the author appears to be an Apple fan; I quote:
"Thomas Hormby is a high school student in Nashville, Tennessee. He maintains two Mac history websites, http://www.mlagazine.com and http://www.macreate.net."
So, it's not so much Apple bashing (although the editorial by-line does make it appear that way) as much as it is a look at some of the ideas that flopped: some were very good ideas not well implemented, others were just ahead of their time, and some were jsut bad ideas (e.g. Word 6.0 for Mac from Microsoft). Oh yeah, not every comment in there is against Apple - some of them are about Apple-related products.
Macreate.net /.'d fast, but it's here as well!
This may be
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Go canucks, habs, and sens!
10 FLOPS? Come on, guys, even my pocket calculator does more than that. :)
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Still ... Apple was one of the early leaders, one who made some absolutely bone-headed mistakes that cost them the lead. Granted, Apple is one of the few survivors from the start of the personal computer revolution, a revolution littered with dead products and companies: the Commodore Pet, 64, Amiga, Ohio Scientific, Southwest Technical Products, Atari's 400 and 800, Franklin, the PC Jr., the various Radio Shack toys and many more ... all gone. But given the fact that Apple was there at the beginning (hell, the Apple ][ defined the PC revolution) they really should have come out on top, with Bill Gates relegated to the status of proud owner of a fifth-rate CPM clone. Bill Gates even told them how to do it! But between Jobs, Scully and Markkula, Apple failed to capitalize on their head start.
//e the way they did. About a year after the original Mac came out, I called up to order a replacement gate array for a //e motherboard. The person I spoke to wouldn't acknowledge that Apple Computer had ever manufactured an Apple Computer and instead recommended that I buy a Mac. They basically just dropped an entire product line and alienated a whole lot of users, many of whom promptly bought an IBM PC or compatible. So, yes, I think it is fair to slam Apple's decisions over the years. They're where they are now (a highly competent technically, but basically marginal player) because they blew it and left the market to Gates and the IBM-compatibles.
//c.
Frankly, I'm still pissed at Apple for abandoning the Apple
And don't even get me started on the Apple
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Virginia Tech did.
If Apple is really the brains of the industry--if its products are so much better than Microsoft's or Dell's or IBM's or Hewlett-Packard's--then why is the company so damned small?
Does the size of a company determine the quality of it's product?
Does the quality of a product determine it's company's size?
If you answer yes to either of those questions, you're out of your fucking mind.
I'd also like to point out that the year-old article you're linking to predicts that the iPod will be crushed by competitors such as the Dell DJ "selling for as little as $299", that the iTunes Music Store will be crushed by Wal-Mart, Microsoft, and Sony, and that it will take "at least a year" for Apple to sell 100 million songs. None of these things are even remotely true.
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
What, you were expecting one button mouse to be here?
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
Actually, the Apple /// was a fairly unsuccessful small business computer system. Remarkably so, although by rights it should have been a runaway success as it addressed all the business-related issues that had been plaguing the Apple ][ series from the beginning. Improved keyboard, cool enclosure, decent display, faster CPU .. pretty slick actually. Honestly, the Apple /// should have eclipsed the IBM PC ... it was there first, had the applications, an actual Business BASIC and backwards compatibility with the older Apple ][ software. What killed it was the initial (and well-deserved) bad rap it got for being unreliable (as well as pricey.) At the time (1980) I was working as a service tech for a local computer store, and the early units I serviced were flaky as hell. Hardly suitable for a home machine much less a business system. Furthermore, initial production runs had a defective real-time clock (great idea, Apple was again ahead of its time) chip. It wasn't until the IBM AT came out that IBM had a built-in hardware RTC. Anyway, Apple did eventually fix the problems with the Apple ///+, but by then it was too late ... it was considered a flop. A few months later the original IBM PC was released (I was sent to IBM sales/service school in Boca Raton the week before the official unveiling) and that sounded the death knell for the Apple ///.
But, yeah. SOS was kinda weird.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Weird-ass keyboard (why make a numerical keyboard with just subtraction?!), but cool looking.
...) ENTER.
More buttons would confuse users. You can perform any basic arithmetic operation with that keypad *.
Subtraction? x, -, y, ENTER.
Addition? x, -, -, y, ENTER.
Multiplication? 4, -, -, 4, -, -, 4, (... so on
So much less complicated than our "modern computers" with our * and / and + keys.
* Not including division.
I read a link to the story yesterday off of OSNews, and it was damn slow even then. It wasn't so much critical of apple as it was pointing out alot of cool things that never came to fruition, Copland having a huge emphasis. I didn't take it so much as flops as I did "here's a list of cool little known items".
College Humor at it's best
OK, here's a REAL flop that is so obscure, I bet that 99.9% of Macheads never heard of it, even if they were Mac users at the time it shipped:
A/UX, the first Unix OS for Mac.
A/UX included special battery support for the Macintosh Portable (yeah, the first portable, the flop, the really heavy one that used lead-acid batteries) and also had sleep support, which was totally unheard of at that time.
I took a certification class in A/UX, and the Apple guys told me they didn't seriously expect to sell many units, the product only existed to fulfill requirements for government sales that specified a Unix OS must be available for any personal computer CPU being requisitioned. Nevermind that the users never intended to USE Unix, the bids were rigged against Macs by specifying Unix must be available, and it wasn't, so that meant Macs were disqualified from bids and only PCs would be considered. But Apple won back some major government business by meeting this petty requirement. Cost em a bundle though.
Problem was when they dropped it, a whole bunch of Apple customers got marooned. It would have been much smarter to get those schoolkids on the Macintosh platform from the very beginning.
Without a time machine that would have been impossible. The successful days of Apple in education were pre-Mac. They basically ruled the education market in the early to mid 1980's. Logically, if they had wanted to keep the market, they should have maintained the ][ series rather than launching an incompatible computer. There's no real reason why we couldn't have 3Ghz 32-bit descendants of the 6502 today.
Slashdot is a strange game. The only winning move is not to play
Shall we play a game?
Love to. How about Slashdot Fanboy Flame War
Wouldn't you prefer a nice game of chess?
Later. Right now let's play Slashdot Fanboy Flame War
Fine.
Apple First Strike - WINNER NONE
Microsoft First Strike - WINNER NONE
Apple vs. IBM Hardware Scenario - WINNER NONE
OSX vs Windows Software Scenario - WINNER NONE
APPLE-AMD Alliance Scenario - WINNER NONE
European Amiga Uprising - WINNER NONE
Transmeta offensive - WINNER NONE
MS-AMD Pact - WINNER NONE
Opensource theater wide uprising - WINNER NONE
Grammar Nazi hostility escalation - WINNER NONE
IBM-SCO counterstrike - WINNER NONE
Sun product announcement surprise - WINNER NONE
Amazon One-Click Conflict - WINNER NONE
DRM limited war - WINNER NONE
Internet Explorer quick strike - WINNER NONE
P2P crackdown - WINNER NONE
Worm assault on Firefox - WINNER NONE
Swedish viral attack on Windows - WINNER NONE
China-India Outsource Pact - WINNER NONE
Torvalds-Gates peace accords - WINNER NONE
ATI Graphics card Domination - WINNER NONE
BSD survival - WINNER NONE
All out format war - WINNER NONE
Programming Language Preference Battle - WINNER NONE
Browser standards confrontation - WINNER NONE
OpenOffice GPL dissention - WINNER NONE
Missing Poll Option Discord - WINNER NONE
Off-topic political rivalry - WINNER NONE
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
Congratulations, you beat the Internet. Three - three?! - WarGames references in a two-line comment... that's fantastic.
If he called them sites about ancient Mac history, would that make you feel better? Or worse?
paintball
Yeah. In other news, history professors who weren't alive during Rome's heyday are writing textbooks about ancient Roman civilization.
In further new, my history prof actually WAS alive during Greece's heyday. Or at least he looked it.
If the 'horror stories' are true, having an unmellowed Steve Jobs raise a child during its formative years might not have been such a good thing.
"Daddy, I drew a pony!"
"Pony? That looks like a lizard. This is shit. You're fired."
"Daddy, you can't fire me."
"Then learn to draw."
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
Uh huh. I had one of those beige boxes, and that PC card. (It wasn't PCI, it was Processor Direct). Great card: I played Wing Commander III on it years before the Mac version shipped. It worked beautifully.
I liked Apple then. I like them better now. Go Steve Go.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Research people were just short-sighted. Obviously, Apple's existing products were not suitable for corporation, but nobody can say that they couldn't possibly develop any new product that would take off. And at that time, if you wanted to do the coolest stuff, you had to do it on expensive workstations first and then trickle down to consumer market as hardware became cheaper.
After Steve Jobs left Apple, he started NeXT which was obviously oriented towards both big and small business. In the meantime Apple stagnated and didn't revive until he came back and ported NeXTStep to Mac hardware.
If he wasn't kicked out from Apple, NeXT would no doubt have Mac application compatibility. Then Apple would be the only company with UNIX workstations that also run all popular personal computer apps. Sun and Microsoft would be in deep trouble. And by '95, Apple would run NextStep on consumer Macs and Microsoft wouldn't have any product with unique advantages to grab 90%+ market share.
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
The @world Pippin. Basically a PPC 603 Mac, custom designed as a videogame console with net capabilities. in conjunction with Bandai. Barely sold enough in Japan, barely registered a blip in America. Considering it was released in 1995 and surpassed the Playstation in computing and graphical capabilities, it was definately ahead of its time, but miles behind decent marketing.
n /a pple_bandai_pippin.html
http://assembler.roarvgm.com/Apple_Bandai_pippi
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
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.