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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've got some barcodes that need scanning!
I honestly think if the VR headgear had been less expensive back in the 90's, VRML would have been a LOT more mainstream; I used some of the better goggles, with (IIRC) 480x480 elements, and they rocked. Bulky, uncomfortable, HEAVY, but cool & useful as hell.
Off Topic: Can anyone tell me what I can do to get back the "you have 3 replies to your last post" info at the top of my /. page? I thought I had just been particularly un-interesting until I checked my email notifications.
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
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
This is the first I have heard of the Tukwilla processor. With Intel not releasing a new processor in the Itanium line for such a long time, I thought they had abandoned it.
I think that maybe this article cross that line far too much. It really should have focused on technologies of false promise (virtual reality, voice recognition, biometrics) instead of products. Some of the ideas were interesting when they limited themselves to the technology over the product. So what if the Zune fails? It's not the end of a technology.
And for fucks sake, can we please stop beating on 10+ year old technology? I'm sick of hearing retards go on and on about Apple Lisa, Microsoft Bob and a bunch of morons who have to make a 640k joke because they don't understand anything more than that. These are the same asshats who've probably never even touched a machine with less than 128 megs of ram.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
At one point, I could write Palm better than block letters. I remember one class where I forgot my Palm. I took notes on a piece of paper. When I got home, I noticed that I had written in Palm!
Anyway, Palm is now a could-have-been. Lost out to Smartphones I guess...
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
It's only now that Bluetooth is getting to be useful, and only then in very limited terms. Sure, it allows people to walk around babbling into headsets, but it could have been so much more.
Umm....the Sony PS3 and Nintendo Wii make major use of Bluetooth technology. In fact those are the only devices I own that I use Bluetooth for.
I wouldn't say the Bluetooth being in the Dualshock 3 and Wiimote is a disappointment at all for both the creators and consumers of the technology.
Even if Bluetooth is underperforming based on its technological potential is it really one of the 10 most disappointing technologies currently?
You should've read further, there's this hilarious bit:
You'd figure at least someone who likes Ubuntu and runs it themselves would have known that Dell has been offering systems with Ubuntu preinstalled for two years now.
Yes, first post technology never really panned out. It is sometimes funny as a second post though, but the joke really is on the AC there.
"Outside of a few models of high-end video cameras, FireWire isn't seen much these days."
How about audio applications? If you want an audio interface for your laptop, you're almost always better off buying a Firewire model than a USB one; but also for many desktop applications Firewire can fit the bill over PCI/PCI-E. Plenty of the audio gear companies (M-Audio, RME, MOTU, Tascam) of course are still putting out new models using Firewire now and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
Neat way to sum it up, but not accurate. Macintosh was nearly finished while Apple was still pushing the Lisa, and Jef Raskin's original concept for the Mac pre-dated the Lisa.
Of course, once Jobs got his mitts on it, he completely changed it from Raskin's vision, eventually provoking Raskin to quit Apple.
"Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
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
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.
Based on what appears to be their idea of how long widespread adoption of new technology should take before it is considered a failure, I'm surprised they haven't mentioned ripped on IPv6.
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.
But did anyone promise that ubuntu would kill off MS or something?
Ubuntu pretty much considers the fact that MS hasn't been killed off, or at least humbled, to be a bug.
Promise? No, but they're trying.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
" 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.
Maybe, maybe not.
However, I think that Ubuntu's a bit too young to call it a 'flop.' The project still has plenty of forward momentum behind it.
That it's the most popular Linux to date is certainly a feat, and major manufacturers have adopted it (albeit in limited circumstances). It may not have changed everything, though it did give things an enormous shove in the right direction. Currently, my eyes are on OpenOffice to clean up its act, or for a new competitor to emerge. The OS itself is no longer the limiting factor.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Back when a 16K x 1 bit RAM chip cost $40, and needed a herd of glue chips to keep it refreshed, bubble RAM was supposed to save us. It was fast, nonvolatile, and (for those early 80's days) dense. There were demo systems and ads and all kinds of hype. And then it just never sort of happened. Dynamic RAM kept getting cheaper and easier to use and the bubbles never came out at all.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
I literally cannot buy a non-x86 desktop or laptop even if I paid $5000.
In the early 1970s, who could have guessed that the great-great-great-grandson of the 4004 would dominate 100% of the desktop market and a sizeable chunk of the rest of the computing market?
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.
Talk about the most ridiculously overhyped invention in recent memory...for a damn scooter.
PointCast anyone?
My friend, Duke, just read the article, and man is he pissed.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
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!
No list of tech disappointments could be complete with the Intel 432. Object oriented machine code and hardware-assisted garbage collection - what's not to love?
Then it could have included Wolfram Alpha.
It depends on your viewpoint. Has Ubuntu saved the unwashed masses from the evil empire yet? Not really. On the other hand, I think it's safe to say that Ubuntu has become the overwhelmingly dominant distro of choice for just about any Linux use case that can be classified as "mainstream". After Red Hat kind of went astray, Mandrake went bye-bye, and Debian (brought into the limelight by Knoppix) decided that ideological purity was more important than being popular, there really WASN'T any distro that was an obvious choice to recommend by default to just about anyone interested in Linux. Gentoo? Good god. I've personally had hours of good clean & wholesome fun with it, but there's no way in *hell* I'd suggest it to my dad... or use it for anything meaningful at work in a context that could get me fired if things went disastrously wrong. Slackware? Yeah, you never forget your first... um... well, you know. But it's just a little more retro than I'd prefer now.
I'm still undecided as to whether i prefer Ubuntu or CentOS for servers, but for desktop use it's no contest whatsoever -- Ubuntu. That's not to say it's the best in every conceivable way... but it's good enough in enough ways. More importantly, it's the one distro with enough market inertia right now to have books dedicated to its specific details. Someone who's been building their own copy of KDE for 10 years probably doesn't need to know the exact directory paths on ${his-specific-distro}... but someone like... well... my dad *does* need to have it given to him in explicit detail. And frankly, even if I don't necessarily need click-by-click details anymore, having the examples in the book actually *work* DOES make things a lot nicer and more enjoyable. In fact, IMHO the "book advantage" *alone* is enough to recommend Ubuntu to just about everyone. When the day comes that they understand the Linux multiverse well enough to stray from the well-marked, illuminated and crowded path known as Ubuntu, they'll know it and be able to find their own way. Until then, Ubuntu.
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
...it would have included the Internet, since nothing good ever came out of it. Period.
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
For some reason, I wasted my time wallowing in the pages of schedenfreud. What I want to know is about the authors of these sorts of articles... Have they ever worked on a useful project? Sure, Lisa or the Zune didn't save the world, but what did the authors do for humanity?
I can only go by my own experience regarding Ubuntu. Every new version of Ubuntu Studio goes on a machine in my media production suite just for that purpose. And every version falls short of being able to do any meaningful media production work. As long as "jack" is my only choice for an audio platform, I'll never be able to replace my Windows and Mac machines. In fact, I can do more actual media production on an old BeOS machine than I can on a Linux machine using current hardware.
I will say this: The ReaMote technology that Cockos Reaper DAW software has allows me to use that Linux machine to offload some of my more resource-intensive processes, such as rendering, sample streaming or real-time effects processing. This makes the Ubuntu box extremely useful. This is why I do my best to support Cockos financially and in other ways. I really want to see more professional media production software companies develop for Linux. Someday soon, I hope to be able to have an all-Linux production facility, but for now, I'm disappointed that this area has been so badly neglected. And I know the money's there, because companies that develop DAW and video editing software for Windows and Mac OS are doing OK.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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'll give my classic example (still not fixed), in iTunes:
Insert a CD
It should "just work" and start ripping the CD, but it doesn't.
Look for an error message.. there is none.
Search the menus, look for a button, nope, there's no way to actually *tell* iTunes that you want it to rip the CD.
etc.
I've had similar experiences with wireless.
"Do you have wireless here?"
"Sure do."
"Umm.. I don't see it."
"Well, it's there, it's called NETGEAR."
"Yeah, it's not coming up. I'd tell you why, but when I click on the little wifi icon it does nothing."
And that's why I say:
It "just works" until it "just doesn't" and then you're "just fucked".
How we know is more important than what we know.
"Has Ubuntu saved the unwashed masses from the evil empire yet?"
The unwashed masses have been saved from the evil long time ago.
It is the people that wash that are still enslaved.
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.
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.
Microsoft products got where they are now on the back of tech folks copying them and using them at home. Those tech folks then took to helping friends and family by installing those same products for them. Nowadays, as MS becomes better and better at locking down their products with DRM and more and more tech folk start coming to grips with linux you will find that this will eventually trickle down to the non tech users.
Personally, I sick and tired of fixing malware infestations for my relatives. These days I just stick dual boot ubuntu on their PC's, show them how it works and tell them they can use the non infested ubuntu or their old broken Windows. It's their choice. So far most people are quite happy as long as they don't want to run games, which mostly they don't.
Most of them just want to browse the web, send emails and write simple documents and you don't need windows for that.
"You can't fight in here, this is the war room!"
I reckon it's more to go to gnome. Running vista, things look a little different, but installing software is pretty similar, the file system places where you might find things are not quite the same, but not that much different. A lot of system tools are pretty much the same. To be fair, it is a bigger leap to gnome or kde, or to OS X. Haven't tried w7, to be honest.
The biggest asset Microsoft has, worth 10s of billions of dollars, is peoples inertia about learning something new. On the other hand, Microsoft has tried to tie buying a new OS to buying a new machine, and that's precisely where they are vulnerable. I think people are less likely to upgrade every 3 to 4 years than they used to be because generally they are pretty happy with what they have.
Interstitial spaces are filled with cream.
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