The Top 21 Tech Flops

PetManimal writes "Whatever happened to Digital Audio Tape? Or Circuit City's DIVX program? Or IBM's PCjr. and the PS/1? Computerworld's list of 21 biggest tech flops is an amusing trip down the memory lane of tech failures. Some are obvious (Apple Newton), while others are obscure (Warner Communications' QUBE). Strangely, Y2K didn't make the list."

Comments

Re:DAT was a flop?

[lightversusdark]

Absolutely, it still sees a lot of use.
It's still the standard way to take music to a mastering house for cutting, and even in the digital domain when people aren't burning data such as .wavs or .aiffs (many "computerless" DAWs only bounce to Red Book) it obviates all of the jitter and other issues associated with audio CDs as a master for duplication.
Consider mastering DVD audio with a 48kHz audio sample rate - you can't burn an audio CD at anything except 44.1. And the StellaDAT and some Pioneer decks support 88.2/96k on conventional tapes (use DDS to be sure).
I haven't even started on DDS drives for archival. DATs aren't going away.

P.S. The audio world is waiting for the "killer app" that allows you to stream in an audio DAT faster than real-time. DDS drives read up to 8x, and quite a few drives have audio-capable firmware. Remember when you could first rip a CD faster than it took to play? It seems archaic to pay hundreds an hour for mastering and waste the first hour striping in the album in real time. Perhaps the fact that this hasn't been addressed for a niche market with money to burn indicates that DAT is effectively "unsupported" nowadays..