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Top 10 Disappointing Technologies
Slatterz writes "Every once in a while, a product comes along that everyone from the executives to the analysts to even the crusty old reporters thinks will change the IT world. Sadly, they are often misguided. This article lists some of the top ten technology disappointments that failed to change the world, from the ludicrously priced Apple Lisa, to voice recognition, to Intel's ill-fated Itanium chip, and virtual reality, this article lists some of the top ten technology disappointments that failed to change the world." But wait! Don't give up too quickly on the Itanium, says the Register.
I love Linux, but sadly I agree with him.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Is he just complaining that Dell doesn't offer the same Ubuntu packages that it offers in the United States?
The question is, are they wrong? Ubuntu really has remained for Linux hobbyists. Maybe it shouldn't be that way, but it is, for the most part.
Brett
There are much greater fails. Fails of such epic magnitude their ripples are easily confused with the tides on the ocean of technology:
10. Floptical storage. Great stuff if you want to lose data.
9. DIVX DVDs. The ones that you could only buy at Circuit City.
8. VRML. Virtual reality is still around. But VRML was an abortion.
7. CueCat. The epic fail that made Slashdot famous.
6.iOpener. What happens when you try to sell a blade free razor using the razor blade model.
5. The Apple Pippen. You've never seen it, it's that bad.
4. Windows ME. Awful, bad, hideous don't describe this one.
3. Chandler. Mitch Kapor's been a part of lots of great things, but Chandler is the PIM we'd all like to forget.
2. MS Bob. Any top 10 tech failure list without it is not credible.
1. Windows Vista. One would think ME would have taught Redmond a lesson.
-- $G
The current 3D MMORPGs are virtual realities.... Millions of people spend the majority of their time in these virtual worlds. Just because they don't wear bulky helmets they're disqualified?
The article is a bit misguided on some of it's top 10 choices.
Presumably by nanotechnology you mean molecular manufacturing.. and that should hardly be on that list because it hasn't happened yet. The list is about shit that happened but fizzed. If an assembler was created tomorrow (and it could happen if Merkle pulls his finger out) and the entire fucking materials world didn't change in under 12 months, I'd be entirely surprised and put it at #1 on this list.
How we know is more important than what we know.
You probably would have disagreed with the rest of it too. I have more than half the tech listed. Quite a poor article. They didn't even say that "DRM claimed it would stop piracy..." which was the first thing to pop into my mind.
But did anyone promise that ubuntu would kill off MS or something? Has it actually failed to deliver?
Because from where I'm sitting Ubuntu is doing a great job of streamlining and simplifying linux. And it sure has had an impact on how a distro is expected to work these days. People even use the term "modern distro" to mean pretty much *buntu and Suse.
Dell has been offering systems with Ubuntu preinstalled for two years now.
Ya, and the incredible impact of this holy grail of Linux has been.......
That's what they should have put on this list :)
How we know is more important than what we know.
Artificial intelligence. We have expert systems, neural networks, etc... but an "human like" artificial intelligence? The singularity that have more odds to happen near us in the future is a black hole.
The close second, if we include transportation are (antigrav) flying cars, of course.
I installed Ubuntu for the first time last year, and man, I was disappointed.
Right out of the box, so to speak, there were problems:
1. NVIDIA graphics card drivers weren't installed because they were proprietary. Come on. Even then, dragging windows around and typing into text boxes had a minor delay that didn't feel natural.
2. All websites looked different and ugly as sin, because the package didn't come with the fonts that every other system used. Come on!
3. Multi-monitor use was difficult to set up without having to alter configuration files ( though I do wish taskbars on multiple screens would come to Windows 7). Some things I found simply couldn't be done without writing scripts: setting up a hotkey to send a window to the other monitor, etc.
To resolve most of these issues, I had to navigate a bunch of forums and wiki help pages. I couldn't imagine trying to show my mom how to do that, for instance.
Ubuntu has a lot of strengths, and many of its features made me go "OOOO, cool!" But the Linux learning curve is freakishly steep. To do something of medium difficulty in Windows generally requires advanced console command knowledge in Ubuntu.
The Dell situation is wonderfully illustrated with the rising number of netbooks out there. People buy them with Linux installed but marketing and brand loyalty blindness has taken care of making them oblivious to how to use a computer that doesn't have a "Start" button. I read stories about customers returning Linux systems because it doesn't look like they've grown to expect. I experienced that with my sister in law which wanted to get a Vista laptop instead of her Ubuntu desktop because it was more "familiar" to her. Sadly Linux COULD be a solution for many more people but they seem to be so used to Windows that they can't even figure out how to use something else.
What is wrong is expecting businesses to pay for something they don't need.
That line can be used in many places at many times for many sides of an argument. It's my favorite argument for staying with Windows XP and Office 2003.
Ubuntu offered to install those for me after starting up the system, I clicked a checkbox and it was installed - no issue.
ubuntu-restricted-extras is rather easy to install.
There is a hotkey to do this on Windows? Please tell me what it is, because I have been getting very irritated recently with win7's multi monitor support.
I'm sceptical after you mentioned point one.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
" The question is, are they wrong? Ubuntu really has remained for Linux hobbyists. Maybe it shouldn't be that way, but it is, for the most part."
Yes, yes they are. The article's name is "Top 10 most disappointing technologies". Maybe the marketshare of Ubuntu has somewhat lagged behind what people hoped for, Ubuntu's tech itself is great and its improvements from release to release are worth the pain of switching to a newer OS. The fact that MS is holding the market hostage with Windows(and it's gigantuan legacy heap) can hardly be described as a fault of Ubuntu.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
Well yeah, the Lisa might have been a failed PRODUCT, but it wasn't a failed technology. Whether the Mac is a parallel product or an evolved product, the point is that the idea of user friendly computer with a WYSIWYG, mouse based GUI was not a failure. This was an early unsuccessful attempt, but in the long run the problems and costs were sorted out. You are working on a machine right now, no matter what the brand of OS, that took those basic ideas and made something successful out of them. And the Newton... same thing. It's Version One of a new tech. The Newton failed, but the Palm arose out of it, and from there a whole world of handhelds and now smartphones.
Sadly Linux COULD be a solution for many more people but they seem to be so used to Windows that they can't even figure out how to use something else.
Uh huh. Yet people happily figure out how to use Macs. Ok, well, maybe not happily. Why do they do it?
marketing and brand loyalty blindness
Bingo. When Ubuntu started up I really got the feeling that Shuttleworth got that it wasn't about technology... sure, an OS has to do a certain amount of "stuff" before people can use it, but that's the easy part. Getting people to try something new isn't about how great the new thing is, it's about style and bullshit. Using a Mac is no easier than using a PC.. in fact, the vast majority of people find it so much harder because they're not familiar with Macs.. but go out into the street and ask a dozen people and they'll say that oh yes, those Macs are so much easier to use than PCs.. that lovely Mr Jobs told them so.
How we know is more important than what we know.
They did not mention DRM? What the hell?
Also this quote about Ubuntu:
Maybe it was just the overenthusiastic marketing or the fanboys who swarmed to the system but Ubuntu really was supposed to change everything, where as the operating system landscape looks very much the same these days.
It did lower the price of XP for netbooks down to a few dollars though... In a way, desktop Linux made netbooks possible - otherwise Microsoft wouldn't lower the price of their system enough for this class of machines to become viable.
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
PointCast anyone?
I'm sick of top ten lists. Why do I care that some group at a magazine chose an arbitrary number of things in some category at their discretion with no real measurable criteria for entering the list? Get me if I'm wrong, but the whole point of a top ten list is to attract visitors to argue about what the magazine chose, and suggest things of their own that didn't make the list. It's a pseudo-event in pure form: a news story with no real news in it.
1. NVIDIA graphics card drivers weren't installed because they were proprietary. Come on. Even then, dragging windows around and typing into text boxes had a minor delay that didn't feel natural.
Since when did Microsoft start shipping NVIDIA drivers with their Windows releases, anyways?
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
It's hard for telcos to figure out how to charge you for it, so they cripple the phone instead.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Well - in fairness, the other part of the problem is that Ubuntu (& Gnome) are not really designed for end users. They're built for how developers believe end-users should work - which is quite different. I don't mean that they're built for developers - rather their built for a developer's notion of what is a logical interaction.
Unfortunately, that often collides with real workflows in subtle but jarring ways. Look even at the desktop menu names ("Applications" "Places" and "System"). The reason that the Start menu has worked is because it gives users /one/ path to get to the things they want. Instead, using gnome/ubuntu, users are immediately faced with a choice - they have to categorize the task they want to do, before they can do it. Every single time, as they learn the system.
One issue among many that shows the disconnect.
Also it's wrong anyway.. Firsly, if you decentralise too much the communication issues between developers mean that you get fragmentation, and most of the work ends up never being used because nobody ever hears of it. Secondly you can't even really do it - there will always be one definitive release, with a set of core developers. For most projects that's basically as far as it ever goes - despite intentions few people have the time to devote to a project, so most (I expect nearly all) opensource porjects whilst being theoretically decentralised are really only one tree with 3 or 4 people maximum committing to it. The linux kernel is the exception to this somewhat, but it can't be used as a general model.
In the corporate world of course decentralisation makes no sense (tracking,auditing and access control is *important* to a company and you can't have people going off and doing their own thing). So in no way is decentralisation 'inherently superior' - it depends on your circumstances.
Now, that's a more accurate title.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
Replace Linux with Vista and you'll see its not just the Linux OS that is having the problem. People are very comfortable with what they have and don't WANT to change.
I love Linux, but sadly I agree with him.
I don't.
"While Linux has definitely caught on in the enterprise server and database market, the open-source OS has never really been able to move into the greater market."
You have to draw the line before you can cross is. KIA's not the first brand that comes to mind when citing car manufacturers that are prevalent in the United States, like Ford or Dodge or Mitsubishi, but it certainly exists and will continue to exist.
"Those who do use Linux as the primary OS for their home or work PC are still by and large tech-savvy users who comprise what used to be known as the 'hobbyist' market. The larger end-user crowd has not been able to warm up to Linux."
The large end market, no. Users who are not tech-savvy, yes.
"Ubuntu was supposed to change that. When the OS was launched, I remember all of my Linux-advocate friends predicting that this would be the product to make the jump and challenge Microsoft in the consumer and workstation spaces. Nearly five years after its release, Ubuntu remains popular amongst Linux users, but has yet to really pick up any sort of real momentum in the greater desktop OS market."
Number one on Distrowatch, Dell, System 76, massive consumer backing, fanatical support, extremely active development, et cetera...
"Yes, getting rave reviews from the Linux community is nice, but get back to me when the housewives and pensioners, not just the IT pros and college students, start dumping Windows for Ubuntu."
How can we know that housewives and pensioners aren't using it?
"But the more he explained his position the more I came to agree. Maybe it was just the overenthusiastic marketing or the fanboys who swarmed to the system but Ubuntu really was supposed to change everything, where as the operating system landscape looks very much the same these days."
Overthrowing Microsoft would have been nice but it doesn't have to go down to change anything. It's easy to think nothing's changed but under the waters the change really is there to behold.
"Don't get me wrong, I like Ubuntu and have it running on a home system. But unless a major manufacturer starts preinstalling it it's going to be confined to the Linux enthusiast and the hobbyist market."
Dell.
From wikipedia...
Total assets US$ 27.561 billion (2008)[1]
Not major enough?
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
However, I think that Ubuntu's a bit too young to call it a 'flop.'
Who's calling it a "flop?" The reason for quoting a word is because you're indicating that someone else said it. It's a disappointment, not a flop. It may still do great things, but before and just immediately after it was released, to hear a user talking about it you would have thought it was God's own OS.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
CueCat had a lot riding on it and lots of fairly high profile partners. Perhaps if it wasn't in the retarded shape of a big plastic cat it might have taken off.
Perhaps if it wasn't a solution in search of a problem it might have taken off.
There, fixed that for you.
Are you seriously suggesting that it's better for a user to have to click a button before being presented with essentially same choice?
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Your final point is the key thing here. The OS is no longer the limiting factor.
The limiting factor is that the linux ecosystem is just not complete enough for a lot of users (accounting software, games, application specific software of so many types), and running a windows VM is mostly pointless if all you do is run windows apps (good for winding back, snapshots, image management etc).
Other thing that is not mentioned enough. Lots of users have struggled for years to accumulate just enough know-how to just get by with Windows. They simply are resistant to having to learn anything new. Total change fatigue dominates the user experience. Think how immense the effort Apple has put in and how long it's taking to win new customers, and it has a far superior ecosystem to Linux in the desktop world.
The great advantage in the server market is that the people making decisions have a clue, so you see Linux win on technical merit, and do very well indeed.
Interstitial spaces are filled with cream.
Come on! proprietary driver issues are the fault of the hardware maker. Nvidia is the 5uXX0r when it comes to Linux support. Anyhow, since last year, Ubuntu auto installs proprietary drivers.
What would we say if Microsoft or Apple took that attitude?
I know for a fact both companies have people who's job it is to work with specific hardware vendors all day long resolving issues and making sure everything works perfectly.
I love Linux, but sadly I agree with him.
The most intractable problem for Linux as a client OS is that it arrived too late.
The mass market desktop in 2009 runs 64 bit Vista Home Premium on a quad core CPU with 4 to 8 GB RAM.
The geek will rant -
but this is fundamentally a very solid platform on which to build.
The budget dual core Atom netbook with Win 7 and ION graphics is just down the road. The form factor is attractive, the price is right - and you can even play games.
If UNIX is more to your taste and you want a mature and standardized GUI, than Apple has you covered.
It's tough to find any breathing room here.
I was in full agreement with all the items they brought up until I got to firewire. You could tell the author has had little or no exposure to it. It's only major downfall if you want to call it that, is that very few windows pcs come with it by default. For the people that can use it, it's very handy for streamed raw video, high speed data transfer, and occasionally in unexpected places like networking and scanners.
Calling USB the "firewire killer" is almost laughable. I ran some tests recently on drive IO speeds on a variety of interfaces here, including IDE, SATA, firewire 400, firewire 800, and watched firewire 400 drill USB480 into the ground on a consistent basis. Insert a hub (since USB is not chainable) and the speed gets butchered even worse. Considering that (for whatever silly reason) windows pcs don't come with it and have such a large market share, and manufacturers are still making products that use firewire as an option or the only interface, there's obviously an advantage to it over USB.
Since there is currently no video-over-usb standard, all sorts of bad things result from a usb only camcorder. USB is not designed to be peer-to-peer, it's peer-to-host, and that severely limits its application and what works naturally with it. I don't even see why the author made a blanket comparison between the two, since mass storage is the only use they really share. Though nowadays high end scanners can use USB480 which is a good thing.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Then you didn't (try to) use linux on the desktop before Ubuntu.
The author (in GP post) talks as if Ubuntu IS Linux.
Ubuntu is just the best desktop Linux so far. By a long shot And I've tried a LOT of desktop linux distributions, and been using linux on the desktop as my primary OS (outside of gaming) for 10+ years.
It's sad that such a great movement in the direction of good desktop linux is being broadly painted as a disappointment. When you hear Ubuntu talked up its because its the best linux yet, not because it's going to overnight put Microsoft out of business and convince everyone to use free software and open formats.
Not products, technologies.
The worst bit was when they said
Don't get me wrong, I like Ubuntu and have it running on a home system. But unless a major manufacturer starts preinstalling it it's going to be confined to the Linux enthusiast and the hobbyist market.
Is Dell not a major manufacturer? This seems like pure flamebait, or perhaps just extremely ignorant journalism.
which is totally what she said